Manufacturer accelerates layout, Mini/Micro LED is progresses but cost pressure is great

The news that the Micro/Mini LED production process has been accelerating since 2018 has been "exciting" for the LED backlighting and display industry. But when the sound of Micro/Mini LED is on the ear, the "cost" concerns of the new product are also rising.

Micro/Mini LED manufacturers accelerate the industrial chain layout in the middle reaches of the middle reaches

From the core technology of technological innovation, whether Micro/Mini LED can enter the market on a large scale on time does not depend on the choice of the terminal application manufacturer, but should "make final decision" by the upstream package enterprise. Therefore, the input of the package to Micro/Mini LED is the top priority of the landing of Micro/Mini LED products.

Shino photoelectricity, in March 1st's investor relations activity, said it has been set up for a year of future display Research Institute, mainly in the study of the Mini LED display and the Mini LED backlight, and the Micro LED display, and has made the layout of the sample. It is expected that there will be Mini TV or phone backlighting at the end of this year, but the specific release may be next year. At the same time, the dry light also favors large size and car market applications.

The domestic packaging plant, hucan also said that in the backlight application of the Mini blue light chip to the display application on the Mini-RGB chip has been introduced more mature chip products, and led the development of part of the product size. Its large-scale commercialization will eventually be carried out in accordance with the launch of the terminal products and the promotion of the market.

The joint-stock company also said in mid January investor relations that 80 inch and more TV sets are likely to use Mini LED and Micro LED, and the company's existing equipment can be Mini LED. The company is timely tracking and mastering the development trends of the industry and various advanced technologies. At present, the company has done a good job of technical reserve and has a certain market base.

In mid April, Ruifeng optoelectronic announcement said that the total amount of funds raised by the company would not exceed 467 million 974 thousand yuan (467 million 974 thousand yuan), and the fund should be put into SMD LED package, Mini LED package, Micro LED technology R & D center and replenish mobile funds. Among them, the construction period of SMD LED package expansion project is 12 months, and the total production scale is 17 billion 800 million SMD LED packaging products annually. The construction period of Mini LED packaging production project is 12 months, and the total production scale is 11 million 800 thousand Mini LED packaging products annually. The project construction period of the Micro LED technology R & D center is also 12 months.

The crystal power indicates that it has taken the lead in the development of Mini LED technology, and the backlighting of mobile phone, TV and higher order pen is the main potential application, and the application technology is expected to be introduced in the second half. Its business and marketing vice president Yong Yong said that Mini LED has a wide range of applications, and there are many cases at present, and conservative estimates are expected to be produced before the end of the year.

Among the upstream manufacturers, Mini LED iron rod powder is 100 million light. This year, hundreds of millions of light will successively launch miniLED, electric competition, car use and various type of thin packaging series, as well as direct down TV application CSP LED and mobile phone in line with full screen design products, to bring up the kinetic energy of operating growth for millions of light. Ye Yinfu, chairman of hundreds of millions of light, is optimistic about the operation of this year. However, the mini LED release of the new product is still expected to wait for the third quarter.

The most exciting news on Mini LED is that Samsung smashed nearly $17 million in prepayment, buying Micro LED panel to Sanan optoelectronic, and signing a three - year contract, and the future Sanan will be a Samsung's exclusive supplier. At the end of 2017, San an ordered 150 organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) equipment, coupled with the support of industrial policy in the mainland. It is expected that San an optoelectronic has the advantages of scale, capacity and comparative cost on the LED wafer.

In the terminal side, Taiwan Institute of industry is building a Micro LED trial production line, the fastest in the third quarter of 2018 will be available to the VR manufacturers. Samsung's COB technology small space LED display was pushed to market in August 2018, and LG will also launch the corresponding product at the same time. SONY has already launched similar products in 2016.

To sum up, the upper and middle reaches of the Micro/Mini LED have achieved "complete technical reserves" and "samples at any time", while "the future capacity investment is sufficient to guarantee". However, from the terminal point of view, the specific application of the landing is still in the "will" state, in 2018 is still more than the use of the application. The industry believes that Micro/Mini LED can "see" in the second half of this year, but the scale needs to wait for "2019".

Cost pressure has been put forward, and SMD/SMT still has its advantages

As a forerunner of LED micro display, Mini LED is a big hit in the market (compared to Micro LED, which also needs to further overcome the bottleneck of the "huge transfer" technology). Its target market includes two major systems of backlight and display screen.

From the backlight, the industry is the first to look at its applications on mobile phones and other products. There are three reasons, 1. OLED competitive pressure, but the supply capacity is not enough, the LCD high-end machine market still has the opportunity; 2. mobile phone large screen product about 2000000000 of the market size is large enough each year, a part of the cutting down, it is enough to achieve the survival of the Mini LED; 3. mobile phone 5-7 inch screen, Mini LED manufacturing more difficult. Small, more feasible.

As for the backlight market of LCD TV sets, the market expectation of Mini LED is still conservative. Because liquid crystal products are less sensitive to low prices and less sensitive to thickness than the mobile market. This allows Mini LED to aim only at the super end of the LCD TV. The latter overlaps with OLED, and the market size is limited. At the same time, the technical difficulty of applying Mini LED on large size LCD TV is also more difficult.

However, the Mini LED industry is very optimistic in vehicle display. Because on the one hand this is a new field, the Maori itself is higher, and the cost sensitivity is low. On the other hand, the lighting conditions of the vehicle make it more necessary for the "top match" product display, color display and brightness level, which is better for Mini LED.

From the display market, Mini LED is optimistic about the small indoor space LED display industry. Since 2017, the price of COB products per flat meter fell below 100 thousand yuan, and it has already opened up the first bucket of "high-end market". The integration of Mini LED and COB is bound to be able to achieve better display performance. In addition, even SMD/SMT, the small spacing LED screen of the patch package / tab process can also obtain better low brightness gray scale control and possible lamp cost advantages from the Mini LED.

The above market analysis, there is a common point, that is, "high-end" two words. This also suggests that Mini LED is not the essence of "economic products" for the time being. For example, there has been a recent news report that Epistar is planning to produce Mini LED chips for smart phone screen backlighting in the third quarter of 2018. Among them, a 5.5 inch Full HD smart phone panel requires 2000-10000 Mini LED for backlighting, and the total cost of the display module is expected to be $35-40 - a cost that makes the "LCD -LED" display system twice as high as the hard screen OLED, and is not competitive.

The same is true of small space LED display areas: products that can be sold in a large scale are often less than 100 thousand yuan per square meter, preferably between $6-8, 000 yuan, even the most advanced command and dispatch center, which also needs such a price level. In this respect, DLP splicing and liquid crystal splicing constitute the main competitive price environment. In other words, if Mini LED is applied to the small spacing LED screen of COB technology, it can not control the reasonable price, and its market is difficult to perform in scale.

In a word, by giving priority to producing Mini LED instead of Micro LED, the upstream and downstream vendors of LED can bypass the difficulty of "huge transfer", which is difficult to achieve by Micro LED, but still cannot avoid the "possible cost problems of the new product system". Therefore, the LED product packaged by SMD is still the focus of the expansion of all the packaging manufacturers: from the middle and upper reaches, it is not considered that there is a market trend of the complete replacement of SMD technology by a Micro/Mini LED. The two will be the coexistence.

This is the case with the coexistence of COB and SMD/SMT in the small space display field. After all, the cost advantage of the latter between P1.5 and above is an "unstoppable temptation". And the LED screen is also looking for new progress. For example, yader recently released Supersafe technology for the LED display. Supersafe technology, through the use of nanomaterials, special technology for the conventional small space LED display double surface treatment, to solve the product weather resistance, bump and other problems, and to maintain the cost advantage of COB products.

In the field of backlight, Mini LED, whether successful or not, can not stop the challenge of emerging display technologies such as OLED. The latter does not require a backlight. So, before the Micro LED direct display product came out, the so-called backlight market, including competitive niche, vehicle and other advantages niche segmentation areas, Mini LED are still "transitional competitors". This greatly shackles people's imagination of the future of the industry. Furthermore, at this stage, the market of mobile phones, PC and TV products has been met with a sluggish industry, which has further increased the difficulty of expanding the Mini LED market.

Micro/Mini LED technical progress is good, and the market terminal "a variety of bottlenecks", constitute a sharp contrast. How to break through these bottlenecks will be the biggest point of view in the Micro/Mini LED industry in 2018.

Source: the age of projection

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