How micro LEDs are successfully industrialized has always been an ultimate problem that spans players around the world.
As the ultimate display technology in the 2D era, Micro LED has become an important track for global panel and chip manufacturers. With the increasing number of entrants, the Micro LED industry chain has now begun to take shape, and the technical route has also blossomed. However, due to multiple factors such as high cost and immature core technology, Micro LED as a whole is still difficult to say industrialization.
However, this does not affect the layout enthusiasm of the head enterprises, because they are more and more determined that Micro LED is the future of display technology. At present, large factories at home and abroad are continuing to increase investment in research and development, hoping to seize the technical highland of Micro LED and strive to be the world's first large-scale mass production manufacturer.
Unlike OLED, on the Micro LED track, global manufacturers are now basically standing on the same starting line. Domestically, Konka Group has a comprehensive layout and a leading scale in the field of Micro LED. From the perspective of the global pattern, Konka has now squeezed into the Micro LED head camp.
Mass production is the "king"
Compared with LCD and OLED, Micro LED display has many significant advantages such as self-illumination, high brightness, large viewing angle, long service life, short response time and low power consumption, and is the ultimate display technology that subverts the industry, and the industry prospect is generally recognized.
According to GGII, around 2022, Micro LED will be applied in mobile phones, VR, vehicles, flat panel displays and other fields, and by 2024, mobile phones and large TV displays will become the two largest markets for Micro LED applications. In 2024, the size of China's Micro LED market will reach 80 billion yuan.
Since 2016, micro LED technology has attracted attention from the outside world. Domestic panel, color TV, chip, packaging industry enterprises have entered the game, including Sanan Optoelectronics, Leyard, BOE, Huaxing Optoelectronics, Jucan Optoelectronics and so on. Konka Group also identified the development direction of Micro LED earlier. In August 2019, Konka announced that it would invest 30 billion yuan in Bishan, Chongqing to build the Konka Group Semiconductor Optoelectronic Industrial Park. This huge investment was like "a thunder on the ground" at the time, which attracted widespread attention. In September, Konka Group announced that it would invest 1.5 billion yuan to establish Chongqing Konka Semiconductor Optoelectronic Research Institute as a joint venture with Chongqing Liangshan Industrial Investment Co., Ltd., and invest no more than 2.55 billion yuan in the research institute to purchase Micro LED-related machinery and equipment and carry out research, production and marketing of related products.
After Konka, in the past two years, major manufacturers have also increased their R&D investment in the field of Micro LED, and everyone wants to compete for the commanding heights of technology. In this technical competition, "mass production" is the key to measuring victory and defeat. At present, micro LED industrialization is also facing the challenges of large-scale area, huge transfer, color solutions, glass-based drives and other technical research. At the same time, the high cost brought about by the high technical threshold has also become an obstacle on the road to the popularization of Micro LED.
Domestic enterprises are expected to achieve transcendence
Entrants are very clear that if Micro LED wants to be introduced to the market at a lower cost and achieve popularization, in the final analysis, it is necessary to have the technology and industrial chain mature enough.
Globally, Micro LED giants mainly include Apple, Sony, Samsung, and Taiwan's Jingdian and Zichuang. Chinese mainland is represented by Konka Group and Leyard. In this new field of display technology, the strength of the big factory is between Bo Zhong.
According to a report released by Yole Développement in May this year, it is estimated that more than $5 billion has been spent on R&D investments or investment mergers and acquisitions of Micro LEDs as of the first quarter of 2021. These investments are mainly led by Chinese companies, followed by Korean companies. In both 2019 and 2020, the patent filing rate for Micro LEDs worldwide increased exponentially.
Since 2019, Konka Group has been more active in micro LED technology patents. Different from other manufacturers' single-point efforts, Konka Group is the layout of the whole industry chain from front-end research and development to terminal market application. Chongqing Konka Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technology Research Institute has applied for nearly 700 patents one year after its establishment.
By December 2020, Konka has built a full-process R&D, small-batch Micro LED production line, and successfully launched a 4K/8K Micro LED display, a flexible Micro LED display, and the LED chip spacing of the Micro LED screen has also been innovatively reduced from 0.375 mm to 0.12 mm. In December last year, Konka Group also preemptively released the world's first Micro LED watch, the APHAEA Watch.
Through the continuous research of core technologies, the scale of Konka Group's Micro LED business has expanded rapidly, and it has now squeezed into the head camp of the global Micro LED track. Under the leadership of Konka Group and other representatives, domestic enterprises are expected to surpass in the field of Micro LED.
In mid-November this year, Konka revealed that the hybrid large-volume transfer technology developed by the company has been greatly improved in terms of transfer efficiency and yield. In addition, the company's Micro LED chips have completed small-batch trial production.
(This article does not constitute any investment advice, investors act accordingly, at their own risk.) ）