Skyworth OLED Morph TV W82
At present, the field of high-end TV has become the focus of major brands, of which Mini LED backlit TV and OLED TV have become two major focuses, and the competition between the two routes is in a "glue state".
Recently, TCL released the "6.18" war report, during this year's "6.18" activities, TCL's Mini LED TV sales in e-commerce omni-channel increased by 35 times year-on-year, and began to see the harvest after continuous cultivation. At the same time, Samsung QD-OLED TV has been attracting much attention, but it has not appeared in the "thousands of calls", and once it is officially released, OLED TV is bound to usher in a new pattern. In the field of high-end TV, the competition between Mini LED and OLED continues to heat up.
OlED's advantage lies in the imaginative space given by its morphological freedom
In 2021, Mini LED technology enters the first year of commercial use, Mini LED backlight TV has suddenly become a highly sought after industry new favorite, Samsung, TCL, Skyworth, Hisense, Konka and other well-known TV brands have entered the Mini LED, in this field of card slot war is becoming increasingly fierce. Entering 2022, the popularity of Mini LED TV remains high, in addition to the previous number of entrants released related TV products, Sharp also released its first Mini LED TV in early June. So far, domestic and foreign TV brands have joined the Mini LED camp.
At the other end of the high-end TV market, OLED TVs are not to be outdone. At present, in the global OLED TV market, although there are many brands involved, sales are mainly concentrated in the two major brands of LG Electronics and Sony; In the domestic brand Skyworth, Itaonics has continued to exert its oled TVs for many years and has occupied a certain market position. It is worth noting that most of the panels used by OLED TV brands are currently supplied by LGD, and the W-OLED panels produced by LGD occupy an absolute monopoly position in the large-size OLED panel market. At the end of last year, as the QD-OLED panel displayed by Samsung began mass production, LGD's dominant pattern was broken. However, due to the limitation of QD-OLED panel yield, the market size of QD-OLED TVs is difficult to expand rapidly in a short period of time. In the future, LGD and Samsung Display will continue to invest in expansion according to market demand.
Source: Ovi revaux
"Today's global TV market scale growth is weak, but under the trend of consumption upgrading, the scale of high-end products such as OLED TVs and Mini LED TVs is still in the expansion period, and brand manufacturers need to seize the opportunity." Li Aiping, senior analyst of Aowei Ruiwo, told reporters that from the perspective of the competitive landscape, the current high-end TV fields such as OLED, Mini LED, and 8K basically have layouts for mainstream TV brands, but each brand has its own focus. Among them, Samsung mainly promotes QD-OLED TVs, LG Electronics mainly promotes W-OLED products, Hisense mainly promotes laser TVs, TCL's center of gravity is on Mini LED TVs, and Xiaomi is more active in oversized size.
So, specifically, what is the current development of the Mini LED and OLED TV market?
According to the research data released by Qunzhi Consulting, the global Mini LED backlight TV shipments are expected to reach 3.8 million units in 2022, with a market share of nearly 2%, an increase of more than 140% year-on-year, and it is expected that the shipment scale of Mini LED backlit TVs will reach 9 million units in 2025, with a market share of 4%. In 2022, the global OLED TV shipments are expected to reach 7.8 million units, with a market share of nearly 4%, a year-on-year increase of nearly 20%, and it is expected that the shipment scale of OLED TVs in 2025 will exceed 14 million units, and the market share will exceed 6%.
From the above data, it can be seen that OLED TVs that started earlier are currently performing better in terms of shipments and market share, while Mini LED TVs have a faster growth rate.
"OLED TV promotion for many years, still maintained within the scale of tens of millions of units, the core bottleneck lies in the yield and production capacity caused by the supply and price disadvantages, so for the current mainstream LCD TV has not formed an overwhelming competitiveness, always under the substitution threshold." Dong Min, deputy secretary-general of the China Electronic Video Industry Association, told the "China Electronics News" reporter that the biggest advantage of OLED development so far is no longer the display quality, but the imagination space given to consumers by its form freedom.
Mini LED continues the vitality of LCD TVs
From a technical point of view, OLED and Mini LED TVs have their own characteristics. It is understood that the main advantages of OLED TVs are higher color gamut and brightness, wider viewing angles, faster response times, and thinner thickness. Compared with the traditional LED backlight TV, it can not only achieve ultra-high contrast and wide color gamut, which greatly improves the vividness of color, but also reduces the optical mixing distance and reduces the thickness of the screen to achieve ultra-thinning.
"At present, the pricing of these two types of TVs is relatively high, the main reason is related to the cost, and the industrial chain needs to be matured." Rong Chaoping, senior research manager of Aowei Ruiwo, mentioned in an interview with China Electronics News.
According to Rong Chaoping's analysis, for OLED panels, more funds are needed to invest in OLED production lines first; Secondly, the participating manufacturers are still relatively small, at present, only LGD and Samsung display have been mass-produced in the oled TV panel field, and the upstream OLED materials and equipment are mainly in the hands of Korean manufacturers, and the supply chain of other manufacturers cannot be stable guaranteed; In addition, OLED TVs are priced high and cannot be generally accepted by the public.
Mini LED TVs also face some challenges. First of all, in terms of technology, Mini LED faces difficulties in chip, packaging, driver IC, backplane and many other aspects in the process of continuously reducing the LED spacing. Secondly, because of the high cost of Mini LED TV, the current price of Mini LED TV is not dominant, so if Mini LED TV wants to develop rapidly, it must solve the problem of cost, and it needs to be more attractive than OLED TV in terms of price.
Sun Jian, senior analyst of the TV division of Qunzhi Consulting, told the "China Electronics News" reporter that Mini LED backlight TV as a backlight upgrade product for LCD TVs, LCD panels and backlight module core components supply chain is more mature, with the panel price continues to decline, and the backlight program continues to improve, Mini LED backlight TV cost advantages will become more prominent. Although OLED TVs have obvious advantages in display performance such as contrast, response time, and color performance, the panel supplier is single, and the high cost inhibits its rapid market growth.
Obviously, Mini LED backlight is a technology developed from traditional LED backlighting. So, in the context of the dominance of the LCD LCD industry, what is the special significance of developing Mini LED backlit TVs?
"In fact, under the competition of the two types of technologies, for consumers, they are more concerned about the performance of various performances than on the advanced nature of public opinion." Dong Min pointed out that the blessing of Mini LED has significantly enhanced the vitality of LCD LCD TVs, making its various indicators comparable to OLED TVs and successfully occupying a position in high-end products.
Sun Jian added that Mini LED backlit TVs need to be equipped with high-end LCD panels, for panel manufacturers, in promoting high-end product development, getting rid of the dilemma of price competition, but also alleviating the pressure brought by oversupply of panels to the industry.
"The rapid growth of Mini LED backlit TVs is conducive to bringing the development of the traditional LCD industry to a new height." Rong Chaoping told reporters.
In the future, the two will develop in parallel in the high-end market
At present, whether it is a Mini LED backlit TV or an OLED TV, the market size is still limited. What is the significance of the emergence and development of the two competing in the field of high-end TV?
It is understood that from a sub-regional point of view, the main consumer market for high-end TV is concentrated in North America, Europe and some economically developed areas such as Asia, and the current market demand for high-end TV is greatly affected by the superposition of various factors such as inflation. Samsung, LG, Sony and other international brands lead the high-end TV market, of which Samsung with Mini LED backlit TV and QD-OLED TV layout high-end product line, LG and Sony high-end products are more focused on OLED TV, Chinese brands are also continuing to invest in the layout of high-end TV, but affected by brand, regional and other factors, is still in the following stage.
"While enhancing brand value, high-end products can also improve the profitability of brand products, avoid the harm and risks brought by excessive price competition to brands and industries, and promote the technical iteration and product upgrading of related industrial chains." Sun Jian told reporters that Mini LED backlight TV, driven by major brands such as Samsung and TCL, the cost of superimposed LCD panels continues to decline and the backlight scheme is continuously optimized, and finally the full-order product line coverage and scale growth from mid-end to high-end can be realized. OLED TVs rely on excellent display performance and the active layout of head brands, based on the high-end market.
Nowadays, all major TV brands are cutting into these two areas at the same time, Mini LED backlit TVs and OLED TVs are two technology tracks that develop in parallel. Rong Chaoping told reporters that the current yield of OLED is already very high, but the price of OLED TV is high, and the future does not rule out that the price of OLED TV panels will be further reduced. For Mini LED TVs, with the improvement of yield, the cost of Mini LED backlight display will decrease by 15-20% per year, and the future is optimistic about the development of Mini LED backlit TVs.
In the future, in these two tracks, panel manufacturers will continue to layout. For Chinese panel companies, in addition to Mini LED technology, olED track is also increasing its layout. It is reported that at present, in the field of large size, Huaxing Optoelectronics has invested in printing OLED panels, and is expected to usher in mass production in the future; Panel manufacturers such as BOE and Visionox also have investment plans in the G8.5 generation line OLED, but they are mainly aimed at the IT panel field and are still in the evaluation stage.
"For a long time to come, Mini LED and OLED will continue to coexist in the high-end TV field for a long time. In addition to the competition of technical performance, a very important influencing factor lies in the strategic choice of the head brand. Dong Min stressed.
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Author 丨 Yang Pengyue
Editor 丨 Xu Heng
American editor 丨 Maria
Producer 丨 Lian Xiaodong