The display industry is increasingly focusing on the "new favorite" Mini LED. However, in the past 2021, the performance of Mini LED, which was highly expected, was not as good as expected, leaving the entire industry into "empty joy". Entering 2022, Mini LED needs to play a "turnaround battle".
Show the "new favorite" of the industry
2021 is regarded by the industry as the first year of the commercial use of Mini LED technology, Apple launched heavyweight Mini LED related products, Samsung, TCL, Skyworth, Hisense, Konka and other TV brands for Mini LED card slot war is becoming increasingly fierce, Huawei, Xiaomi has also joined the battle. Under the giant's opening, the Mini LED track has become lively.
Apple has released a new 12.9-inch iPad Pro and a new MacBook Pro with a Mini LED-backlit display in 2021. According to industry chain news, Apple will also be equipped with a Mini LED backlit screen in the new MacBook Air released in 2022.
In 2021, Samsung Electronics launched a series of 50-85-inch mid-to-high-end 4K and flagship 55-inch 8KMini LED TVs, which exceeded the million level in the first year of shipment, reaching 1.5 million units. TCL has achieved mass production of Mini LED TVs in 2019, and has launched a number of Mini LED smart screen series products so far. Skyworth launched the first Mini LED TV in February last year, and then launched the 75-inch and 86-inch Mini LED TV Q72 in September. In addition to the Mini LED TV, Konka also released the first Mini LED backlit display and cinema Mini LED screen in 2021. Hisense launched the Mini LED TV 85u9h equipped with a self-developed 8K picture quality chip at the CES2022 exhibition.
Huawei and Xiaomi are not absent. In July 2021, Huawei released its first Mini LED backlit TV, the Huawei Smart Screen V 75 Super priced at 24,999 yuan. Xiaomi launched its first Mini LED product as early as September 2020 - Xiaomi TV Master Extreme Commemorative Edition.
At present, Mini LED is in the period of capacity expansion, upstream chip materials, midstream panels and downstream terminals are poised to develop, and the market pattern is accelerating. It is predicted that the products of apple, Samsung and Huawei alone in 2021 are expected to drive the shipment of 110,000 Mini LED chips upstream/ month, corresponding to a market size of more than 3 billion yuan. Prospective Industry Research Institute expects that the market size of China's Mini LED industry is expected to exceed 40 billion yuan in 2026, and the compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2026 will reach 50%.
Industry insiders believe that for the entire display industry, the development and application of Mini LED backlight technology has special significance. On the one hand, it can promote the iteration of display technology innovation and benchmark OLED. At present, the traditional LED in the high-end display market has been squeezed by OLED technology, and the appearance of MiniLED in the key display performance indicators has greatly shortened the gap with OLED, and it also has considerable advantages in terms of cost performance: now the display effect of Mini LED is very close to the existing OLED, but its price is 60% to 80% of OLED. On the other hand, Mini LED backlight technology can further extend the life cycle of LCDs.
Previously, Tianfeng Securities analyst Guo Mingqi pointed out that if the MacBook and iPad get more positive feedback from the market due to the use of Mini LED panels, there will be more non-Apple manufacturers to imitate Apple's strategy of adopting and promoting Mini LED, which will consume a lot of LED production capacity.
Rong Chaoping, senior research manager of Aowei Ruiwo, told the "China Electronics News" reporter: "Mini LED is widely used, from small-size VR equipment to large-sizeD TVs. Mini LED has its necessity for both upstream supply chain and downstream terminal manufacturers. ”
The market performed less than expected
With the start of the commercialization of Mini LED backlight in 2021, equipment, chips, packages, backlight modules, panels, and terminal brand manufacturers from upstream, midstream, and downstream have laid out, investing a lot of money and energy in order to seize the opportunity, directly pushing the Mini LED industry into the lane of rapid growth.
In the terminal application, Mini LED TV has become the hottest plate. According to the forecasts given by a number of market research institutions last year, the global Mini LED TV shipments are expected to be between 3 million and 5 million units in 2021. However, in the end, the feedback given by the market was not as good as expected, so that the entire display industry waited for an "empty joy".
According to AVC revo data, the global Mini LED TV shipments in 2021 will be 1.5 million units, although there is a huge leap compared with 2020, but it only reaches half of the brand manufacturer's target of 3 million units in early 2021. Among them, Samsung Electronics is the largest shipping manufacturer, accounting for 78% of the market share of Mini LED TVs; followed by TCL, accounting for 16% of the share, although other brand manufacturers have entered the game, but the share is still low. In contrast, OLED TV shipments reached 6.7 million units in 2021, an annual increase of 70%.
Although the current Mini LED technology has been relatively mature, but subject to cost factors and differentiated consumer demand, Mini LED backlight products are the first to be applied to the high-end market segment. Through interviews with a number of industry experts, the reporter found that the cost problem is an important factor hindering the large-scale application of Mini LED.
"In 2021, mainstream brand manufacturers have successively released Mini LED TVs, but from the perspective of positioning, the price of Mini LED TVs is not low, and some prices even exceed OLED TVs." Rong Chaoping told China Electronics News that Mini LED technology faces challenges in terms of technology, cost, and OLED competition in the current development process.
First of all, in terms of technology, Mini LED faces difficulties in many aspects such as chips, packaging, driver ICs, and backplanes in the process of continuously reducing the LED spacing. Secondly, because of the high cost of Mini LED TV, the price of the whole machine is high, which is not conducive to market penetration. In addition, Mini LED in the high-end market development by OLED competition, as a technology based on the LCD improvement, Mini LED in contrast, area light control effect to OLED technology closer, but still need to be reflected through the backlight, so in terms of thin, curlability and other aspects are still not as good as OLED. At present, the price of Mini LED TV is not dominant, so if Mini LED TV wants to develop rapidly, it must solve problems such as technology and cost.
In addition, industry specifications are also a problem faced in the development of Mini LEDs. At present, there are many categories of Mini LED-related products, the positioning is not clear enough, and there is a lack of unified technical standards and specifications.
Li Wentao, a research expert in TCL Huaxing Optoelectronic Mini/Micro LED technology, said in an interview with China Electronics News that 2021 is the year of Mini LED, but the most widely used areas in the entire Mini LED industry are still large-size TVs and e-sports displays, as well as a small number of laptops and flat panels. Its overall process has not yet been fully finalized, so the cost of each manufacturer varies greatly, resulting in high end product costs and low customer acceptance.
"The technical limitations are not particularly numerous, mainly due to the lack of participants in the entire industry and the different capabilities of all parties. MiniLED is equivalent to a new technology, compared with the original conventional products, higher requirements, technology implementation, supply chain (equipment, materials, processes) changes, technology accumulation (especially COB process) and manufacturing yield These factors will affect the terminal cost. Li Wentao told reporters.
Hu Chunming, executive deputy secretary general of the LIQUID CRYSTAL Branch of the China Optical Optoelectronics Industry Association, pointed out that shipments are only a matter of time, and the biggest challenge should be the cost problem, and the direction of the solution is to rely on the brand to pull.
Fight a "turnaround battle"
Mini LED development momentum in 2022 will continue unabated. According to the TrendForce Jibang Consulting Survey, the annual growth rate of Mini LED TVs will double in 2022, and shipments will challenge 4.5 million units.
Hu Chunming told reporters that the application of Mini LED backlight is mainly large-size applications, including TVs, monitors and laptops. Its technical prospects are currently more clear is the glass-based, the market prospect is still in the traditional application, the direction should be cost reduction or capacity consumption. The technical prospects and direction of Mini LED direct display are the same as backlighting, but the market should also be in the new incremental market opportunities, such as the replacement of PCB-based products, or cinemas.
CES2022 (International Consumer Electronics Exhibition) held in January 2022 can be regarded as a bellwether for the development of the industry, and this exhibition can see that Mini LED technology is favored and new products are increasing. The first is that Samsung and TCL, which have previously entered the game, continue to exert their mini LED, and have launched new Mini LED TVs and displays. According to TCL, Mini LED is the core strategic direction of TCL TV, and in 2022, TCL will launch 3 series, 4 sizes, 7 product lines, and 18 Mini LED products. In addition, a number of other brands have also joined the Mini LED array, among which it is worth noting that Japan's Sony first introduced Mini LED technology and launched two Mini LED TV products.
The momentum of the Mini LED industry is not the "wishful thinking" of terminal manufacturers, and the confidence behind it comes from the positive actions of related enterprises in the upstream, middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain.
Among the upstream chip manufacturers, Sanan Optoelectronics, a leading domestic LED chip manufacturer, frequently increased its capital in Mini/MicroLED, and continued to increase the size of the layout of Mini/Micro LED. In September last year, Sanan Optoelectronics announced that it intends to raise no more than 7.9 billion yuan for the Mini/Micro display industrialization project of Hubei Sanan Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. and supplementary working capital to further expand the production capacity of Mini/Micro LED. According to the intention orders currently obtained by Sanan Optoelectronics, the order amount in 2022 is about 220 million yuan / month (US dollars are converted according to 6.5 exchange rates).
Hu Chunming told the "China Electronics News" reporter: "The reason for the acceleration of the industrialization process of Mini LED technology is related to competitive technologies such as OLED and Micro LED, but more importantly, the need for LCD technology itself to upgrade, the power of the supply side is greater than the pull on the demand side." "Therefore, the development prospect of Mini LED technology is to see whether it can help LCD technology increase added value, that is, to expand the scale of applications at a continuously reducing cost; second, to see whether it can open up newer incremental market segments." Now it seems that the market performance of the former is more optimistic.
Among panel manufacturers, TCL Huaxing has taken the lead in laying out the whole industry chain since 2017, and has continued to deepen the technology and product research and development of MiniLED for many years, and has dozens of technical commanding heights and hundreds of patented technologies in 12 fields such as backlight design, backlight technology, and whole machine module on the core technology chain of Mini LED. Starting from 2020, BOE will list MLED (Mini/Micro LED) as an independent business, and launch a series of Mini LED backlight and direct display products, improving the technology and market capabilities in the MLED field has become its focus in the next 3-5 years. Terminal manufacturer Skyworth also spent 6.5 billion yuan in May last year to build projects such as Mini LED chips, backlight modules, TVs, and direct displays.
In the future, under the traction of terminal manufacturers, the upstream and downstream enterprises of the Mini LED industry chain will continue to increase the number, and mini LED-related products will continue to increase. With the improvement of the technological maturity of the upstream industry chain, the optimization of the technical side and the sinking of the cost end, the application of Mini LED will be further popularized. For the "empty joy" Mini LED, it is also urgent to play a "turnaround battle" in 2022 to justify its own name.