In recent years, display technology innovation has continued, forming a situation in which quantum dots, OLED, lasers, Mini/Micro-LED and other technologies coexist. Among the many technologies, Mini-LED has won the favor of many enterprises, including Apple, Huawei, Samsung, TCL, Hisense and other internationally renowned brands have joined the Mini-LED battle.
Industry insiders told the author that the current Mini-LED industry development is in the 0-1 outbreak stage, with the gradual improvement of the supply chain system, the release of production capacity scale effect, Mini-LED penetration rate will increase rapidly in the next few years, is expected to drive the upstream of the industrial chain Sanan Optoelectronics, Micro Company, Longli Technology and other manufacturers performance rapidly improved.
The industry is in the 0-1 outbreak phase
The industry knows that Mini-LED has high display effect, low power consumption, high technical life and other excellent characteristics, its combination of LCD in the display color can also be comparable to OLED, cost performance and service life is more advantageous, is a solution to meet the needs of high-end, can restrict the penetration of OLED to a certain extent.
Industry insiders believe that Mini-LED has a long life cycle in the future, and it is expected that the combination of Mini-LED backlight and LCD and OLED will coexist for a long time in the future, which will also significantly enhance the competitiveness of the LCD industry and make the industry grow.
With the improvement of Mini-LED backlight technology, Huawei, TCL, Samsung, Philips, Konka, Hisense and other manufacturers have launched Mini-LED backlight series TV products in an attempt to occupy more market share.
Under the power of more terminal brands, the Mini-LED market began to penetrate rapidly, and the large-screen market began to grow rapidly. Omdia data shows that in 2022, the shipment of Mini-LED panels for TVs will be more than twice that of 2021.
Dong Min, deputy secretary-general of the China Electronic Video Industry Association, also told Aijiwei, "In about three years, Mini-LED TVs are likely to surpass the OLED market and reach the level of more than 10 million units, at which time Mini-LED backlight products will cover high-end products, the products are more mature and price-effective, their cost performance will be higher, and the performance will be closer to Micro-LED products." ”
At the same time, Apple released iPad Pro and MacBook Pro products based on Mini-LED technology, and the follow-up intention is to add the new MacBook Air and 27-inch iMac Pro to the Mini-LED panel camp, and after the technology giant cuts in, the Mini-LED small screen market is also expected to quickly form a scale.
According to DSCC's forecast, Shipments of Mini-LED panels for tablets are expected to grow by 80% by 2022 to reach 9.7 million units. The shipment of Mini-LED panels for notebook computers will also reach 5 million units, an increase of 150% year-on-year. Although other brands also offer Mini-LED backlit laptops, Apple will still have a majority of the market share.
With the continuous penetration of Mini-LED products in TVs, IT and other fields, its market size has also increased rapidly. Arizton expects the global Mini-LED market size to reach $2.322 billion by 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 147.92%.
Industry insiders told the author, "At present, the development of the Mini-LED industry is in the process of 0-1, due to the low base, so the growth rate will be relatively fast." Zhu Yuwen, secretary of the board of directors of Zhouming Technology, also said bluntly, "The company is very optimistic about the future development space of Mini-LED, but now it is just the initial stage, and there must be a doubling to twice the growth rate." ”
The problem of high costs remains to be solved
Although the industry is optimistic about the market prospects of Mini-LED, it still faces the problem of high cost. From the perspective of the iPad Pro product released by Apple, the same specification OLED technology and Mini-LED technology still maintain a certain cost advantage compared with it, and the high price also affects its promotion process.
Industry insiders told the author, "At present, the slow progress of Mini-LED is mainly due to the higher cost, and most of the terminals are flagship products of various brands." Whether the amount can be raised depends more on the decline in the cost of raw materials such as chips, substrates, and driver chips, and it is expected that each terminal product will be more abundant in 2022. ”
Shao Pengrui, general manager of the backlighting division of Jingtai Shares, also admitted that the current mini-LED backlight is aimed at civilian display market users with high price sensitivity, and the current Mini-LED backlight due to the uncertain technical route, the high cost of Mini-LED chips and other factors, also affect the product pricing, resulting in consumer acceptance is not high enough. How to break through the siege and accelerate the penetration of the market must be balanced between cost and technical value.
However, with the advancement of technology, the price of Mini-LED products will show a gradual downward trend. Among 12.9-inch Mini-LED products, the BLU cost accounts for about 60% of the total cost. DSCC expects the 12.9-inch Mini-LED display cost to fall at a rate of 9% per year to around $140 in 2025. The cost of BLU should fall at an 11% rate.
For the cost problem, a panel manufacturer told the author, "Mini-LED backlight products use more lamp beads, the price is indeed very expensive, but with the continuous optimization of product solutions, large-scale mass production to improve efficiency and yield and raw material prices decline, its product prices will continue to decline, it will occur some non-linear changes, when it comes to price critical points, its market is easy to open quickly." ”
Omdia also expects that the cost gap between Mini-LED backlit LCDs and ordinary LCDs will rapidly narrow over time. In 2025, with the use of low-density Mini-LED backlighting and optimization of LED chip design, the cost gap between the two will be reduced from the current nearly 4 times to 1.2 times, which is expected to accelerate the Penetration of Mini-LED backlight.
Who will ultimately benefit?
At present, although Mini-LED products are still in the early stage of increasing penetration, under the support of policies and the guidance of giants, the future volume of Mini-LED can be expected. Of course, domestic manufacturers will not miss such an imaginative market.
In recent years, domestic manufacturers have increased the size of the Mini-LED field, Mini-LED industry chain upstream chip companies include Sanan Optoelectronics, HC Semitek, Qianzhao Optoelectronics and so on. Midstream packaging and testing manufacturers include Guoxing Optoelectronics, Ruifeng Optoelectronics, MTC Shares, etc., equipment manufacturers Han's Laser, North Huachuang, Zhongwei Semiconductor, Xinyichang and so on.
Industry insiders told the author, "After several years of development, Mini-LED backlight industry chain liquid crystal has gradually matured, and the localization rate of materials/equipment is still relatively high." As far as LED chips are concerned, most of them are domestic, and there is still a part of the production capacity abroad. ”
According to industry chain sources, Apple's current Mini-LED backlight procurement unit price is only on the basis of the traditional backlight, increasing the cost by less than 40%. Although after subtracting the traditional light guide plate and reducing the use of optical film, most of the cost is added to the Mini-LED chip and packaging link, which benefits the Mini-LED link manufacturers.
In order to increase the production capacity of the Mini-LED backlight, Apple hopes that Sanan Optoelectronics and Luxun Precision, which have richer production capacity, will cut into the LED chip production of the Mini-LED backlight and the SMT package of the Mini-LED backlight. However, both companies currently have the problem of restricting the licensing of technology patents, which affects their import process.
Although the supply of Apple is blocked, Sanan Optoelectronics Mini-LED chips have been supplied in batches to Samsung, TCL Huaxing and other manufacturers, and are the core suppliers of many brand manufacturers. In addition to the TV market, the company's Mini-LED is also widely used in display areas such as tablets, notebook computers and car screens, and shipments are increasing month by month, according to it.
Benefiting from the upward trend of the industry, packaging manufacturers such as Guoxing Optoelectronics and Ruifeng Optoelectronics have also significantly increased their momentum rate in the second half of 2021. The module manufacturer Longli Technology also said that the company has laid out a total of 17 Mini-LED production lines, and has completed 50% of the production line construction.
In the field of equipment, Zhongwei Company released the Prismo UniMax MOCVD device in June 2021, mainly for the mass production of gallium nitride-based Mini-LED epitaxial wafers, and by December the order for the equipment had exceeded 100 cavities. Xinyichang also said that the company's sales of Mini-LED solid crystal machines in 2021 are about 200 million, and in the future, as customers continue to transfer from small pitch LEDs to Mini-LED, it is expected to maintain 30% to 50% growth in 2022.
Judging from the current development progress of new products in brand factories, Mini-LED will be the first to be applied to terminal products such as tablets, laptops and TVs, and the dosage will be quite large, which is expected to drive market demand to break out in an all-round way. CITIC Securities believes that the high visibility of Mini-LED orders in 2022 is expected to drive the performance of related manufacturers in all aspects of the industrial chain to continue to grow. (Proofreading/New)