The total screen area inside new passenger vehicles jumped 19% in 2025, with Chinese automakers leading the race to put ever-larger displays in front of drivers.
If your last few test drives left you feeling like you were sitting behind a flat-screen TV, you weren't imagining it. Center information displays — the screens in the middle of the dashboard that handle everything from navigation to climate control — got noticeably larger in 2025, and the trend shows no signs of slowing.
New figures from Counterpoint's Automotive Display Shipment report and its Global Passenger Vehicle Infotainment Market Insight report put some hard numbers behind what anyone walking through a dealership lot has probably already noticed. Screens measuring 15 to 20 inches now account for 11% of center displays in new passenger vehicles, up from 7% just a year earlier. The 10-to-15-inch range is still the workhorse of the industry — that bucket grew from 54% to 60% of the market — and it's also where most digital instrument clusters (the screens that replaced the old analog speedometer) tend to land.
The truly massive screens, the ones north of 20 inches, are still a niche category by volume. But they're the fastest-growing slice of the market, and that's largely a Chinese story. Domestic Chinese brands have been pushing the boundaries hardest here, betting that buyers want their cars to feel like a rolling living room — somewhere to navigate, stream, and even game while parked or charging.
Stack the bigger average screen size on top of overall vehicle sales growth and you get the headline figure: a 19% year-over-year jump in total center display area shipped in 2025.
LCD is still doing the heavy lifting. Despite years of buzz around OLED, liquid crystal panels remain dominant in cars for the simple reason that the supply chain is mature, capacity is plentiful, and the economics work. OLED did pick up share, but it's still less than 2% of total center display area. MiniLED-backlit LCD also made gains, slotting in just behind OLED.
"OLED is positioned as a premium display technology that offers not only excellent contrast but also unique designs, as exemplified by the upcoming Ferrari Luce," said Guillaume Chansin, Associate Director at Counterpoint. "However, MiniLED LCD is seen as a more affordable alternative to OLED and is available from all the key LCD suppliers."
Looking ahead, the picture gets more complicated. Automakers are quietly redrawing their product roadmaps, walking back some of their all-electric ambitions in favor of plug-in hybrids and conventional hybrids — and tightening their belts on bill-of-materials costs along the way. Bigger, fancier screens are an obvious target when accountants start sharpening their pencils.
Regulators are weighing in, too. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has draft rules in the works, and Europe's Euro NCAP safety testing program is moving toward standards that would require physical controls for key functions — a direct shot at the touchscreen-everything design philosophy that's defined the past decade of dashboard design. Whether that genuinely slows the screen arms race or just forces a few buttons back onto the steering wheel remains to be seen.
For now, though, the trajectory is clear: cars are turning into the largest display device most people interact with all day, and 2026 will test whether that trend can survive cost pressure and the regulatory pushback at the same time.
About Counterpoint Research
Counterpoint Research is a global market research firm specializing in products across the technology ecosystem. The firm advises a diverse range of clients — from smartphone OEMs to chipmakers and channel players to Big Tech — through offices located in major innovation hubs, manufacturing clusters and commercial centers worldwide. Counterpoint's analyst team engages with stakeholders across the enterprise to deliver market data, thought leadership and consulting services. Core coverage areas include AI, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Displays, eSIM, IoT, Location Platforms, Macroeconomics, Manufacturing, Networks and Infrastructure, Semiconductors, Smartphones and Wearables.
