"Samsung's roadmap may be to rely on OLED for small and medium-sized sizes; Large size, such as TV, etc., rely on micro LED! This is the latest summary of the "next generation display" giants in the industry.
Among them, Samsung exhibited a 38-inch micro LED prototype at a recent trade fair. So far, Samsung has realized micro LED on TV, from 38 inches, 76 inches, 89 inches, 101 inches, 110 inches, 114 inches and other mainstream consumer sizes of the general coverage. However, some analysts believe that Samsung's 38-inch is actually a quarter of the 4K version of the 76-inch product, which is 2K resolution and has no fundamental technical improvement.
According to data released by IDC, in 2023, Samsung will become the world's largest OLED display brand, accounting for 34.7% of sales and 28.3% of sales. The main products include 27 inches, 32 inches, 34 inches and 49 inches products. In addition, Samsung also maintains a global leader in 10-20-inch IT OLED products.
OLEDMuide micro LED,It seems that it has constituted Samsung's 5-inch from the mobile phone screen to the 114-inch of the giant screen color TV"Continuous supply line",This may be Samsung's complete abandonment of LCD panel manufacturing,The answer definition of the future display!
陪伴三星，京东方布局OLED+micro LED
In the global display market, Samsung is the largest terminal brand, and BOE is the largest upstream panel manufacturer. When it comes to next-gen choices, the two are now almost inextricably linked.
Recently, BOE HC Semitek (Guangdong) Co., Ltd. has undergone industrial and commercial changes, and the registered capital has increased from 100 million yuan to 1.86 billion yuan. As an upstream LED wafer, chip and packaging company, HC Semitek has made BOE even surpass Samsung in terms of investment depth in the micro LED industry chain. This is slightly different from Samsung's cooperation with the mainland Taiwanese industry chain and more focused on the promotion of terminal THE WALL products.
In addition, Samsung announced in April 2023 that it would invest 4.1 trillion won (about 21.5 billion yuan) to build an 8.6-generation OLED panel production line, mainly for the IT 10-40-inch market to expand OLED panel manufacturing capacity, and in the first quarter of this year, BOE plans to invest 63 billion yuan to build the 8.6th generation AMOLED production line project also held a groundbreaking ceremony and entered the construction stage.
It is worth mentioning that while vigorously developing OLED for IT, Samsung has delayed the expansion of the production line for OLED for TV. According to Korean media reports, according to industry sources, Samsung Display plans to deploy about 500 large-size OLED personnel in the field of small and medium-sized OLED in the first half of this year. ——This proves that Samsung may rely more on micro LED in future color TVs.
Although there are differences in emphasis, Samsung is biased towards the terminal market, and BOE focuses on the positioning of upstream partners, but the two are almost synchronous in the selection and expansion of OLED+micro LED. Some analysts believe that whether it is OLED for IT or micro LED for color TV, the initial market is facing cost challenges, and the scale of demand is limited, so it is important to occupy the first node of time. In this way, the market saturation can be used to suppress the follow-up of latecomers.
Move forward cautiously, and more industrial partners are optimistic but not impatient
Unlike Samsung and BOE's certainty of investment in OLED for IT, LGD and Huaxing Optoelectronics, as the other two bigwigs in the OLED industry market, have some different ideas.
LGD's 8.6 generation line OLED plan is not expected to be announced until the second half of 2024. At the same time, the plan to sell the 8.5 generation line of Guangzhou LCD and raise funds for the new OLED line is still in progress and has not yet been "finalized".
CSOT said that the company currently has no investment plan for the 8th generation OLED production line. Huaxing's current core next-generation task is to promote the mass production of the 5.5 generation printed OLED test line. Huaxing is more inclined to use more advanced and low-cost printing and display manufacturing processes to achieve lane change and overtaking on OLED. At present, Huaxing is also the only company in the world that is building a large-scale printing OLED test line. It is believed that before the final conclusion of this technical route, Huaxing's investment in the next generation of medium-size display technology chain will continue to remain low-key.
In terms of investment in OLED for IT, other panel giants such as Shenzhen Tianma basically respond with "keep an eye on it", while Taiwan's AUO and Innolux are more cautious. So, in terms of OLED size, it seems that urgency is not "comprehensive". Whether it is due to overcapacity or the choice of divergent technical routes, at least different manufacturers show different heat. - Different manufacturers have different temperatures, and this is also true for micro LEDs.
At the beginning of 2024, Huaxing's parent company TCL launched micro LED giant screen color TV products. Previously, TCL and San'an Optoelectronics have established joint R&D cooperation on corresponding technologies. This is considered to be an important signal that TCL has increased the layout of micro LEDs in the future large-size display and TV market.
The pioneer of the domestic OLED display market, Visionox is also very aggressive in the layout of micro LED. Its main investment, Chenxian Optoelectronics, has invested in the construction of the world's first AM TFT driver micro LED panel module mass production line in 2023. At present, the Visionox system, which does not have the manufacturing capacity of large-size panels, is eager to rely on this to enter the large-size display market in 2025.
Domestic color TV brands Hisense, Konka, and Skyworth have also invested in the micro LED upstream industry chain at different depths. Among them, Hisense and Konka are involved in the complete industrial system of wafers, chips, packaging and terminals. It is also considered a strong supporter of micro LED large-size display technology.
On the micro LED display, there are not only the above highly supported related events, but also some "headwind news". For example, Taiwan's Ennostar has effectively announced that it has reduced its plans to expand micro LED production in the short term by selling some of its plants. Apple announced that it had temporarily abandoned its plans for micro LED watches and other products, which directly led to the abort of Osram's micro LED wafer and chip project in Malaysia.
Recently, San'an Optoelectronics issued the "Announcement on the Postponement of Raised Funds Investment Projects", announcing that it intends to postpone and adjust the date when the "Hubei San'an Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. Mini/Micro Display Industrialization Project" reaches the scheduled usable state. Its production date has been postponed from June 2024 to June 2026. ……
The above information shows that the mass production of micro LED seems to have encountered certain difficulties and requires a longer time of polishing. At present, industry insiders generally expect that "MarketandMarkets previously predicted that the global Micro LED market size would be $346 million in 2018 and is expected to expand to $18.653 billion by 2026" The prediction may be difficult to achieve.
Cost and capacity: OLED and micro LED are unavoidable problems
Whether it is OLED on IT or micro LED on TV, they all face the same three problems: one is the yield, one is the production capacity, and the other is the cost.
From the perspective of yield, OLED evaporation technology is large-scale, and the increase in cost and defect rate are important market competitiveness defects. This is also the reason why the industry is developing new routes such as "lithography patterning instead of metal masking" and "printing patterning replacing evaporation process".
In the case of Micro LEDs, the main difficulties are mass transfer and high-precision substrates. It is difficult to obtain line widths below 50 microns for PCB substrates, which is a serious divergence from the future technology landscape of micro LED sizes below 50 microns. That is, the direct application of micro LED packaging on the PCB board will face the bottleneck of printed wire width. The good news is that there are two solutions to this: one is MIP packaging technology, which is to package micro LEDs into separate devices to overcome the problem of linewidth mismatch. This technology is sufficient for applications above the P0.5 pitch. The other is the use of glass substrate technology, AM driver glass substrate can achieve smaller lithography line width directly matched micro LED chip scale packaging, with fewer links in the industrial chain, and has a theoretical cost advantage.
However, regardless of the technology, micro LEDs in the micro-pitch era face challenges such as efficiency, cost, reliability, and repair caused by the transfer of "massive pixels". That is, the problem of mass transfer. The existing mass transfer methods are not yet able to adapt to the cheap, high-resolution and massive market demand of the TV market.
At the same time, productivity is also a common issue for OLED and micro LED for IT. 8.6 generation line, the threshold to achieve large-scale benefits is more than 30,000 pieces of glass substrate per month. This corresponds to almost the scale of manufacturing 10 million 25-inch displays throughout the year. At present, in the context of the relatively expensive price of OLED displays, whether the production capacity of a large amount of investment can be digested in a timely manner, rather than leading to insufficient operating rate and continuous losses, requires a more rational judgment.
In the case of micro LEDs, the capacity problem is only going to get worse. Because, even if there is no new wafer line construction, just the old line from manufacturing 100 micron mini LEDs to producing 50 micron micro LEDs, its actual production capacity in pixel terms will be increased by three times, to four times. With the improvement of micro LED luminous efficiency, smaller pixel LED crystals can also meet the display brightness needs in the future, which will continue to bring about the expansion of production capacity due to "process upgrades". - At this point, the good news is that this capacity expansion is a very low-cost capacity increase.
At the same time, whether it is the 8.6 generation line of OLED or the wafer factory of micro LED, it is a highly intensive project in terms of capital, technology, and production capacity. With the investment of new production capacity or new processes, it may lead to a cyclical jump in production capacity, forming a cyclical price competition impact on the supply side. The latter is almost the core supply law in the LCD panel production line.
Of course, if the cost problem can be solved, then the production capacity is not a problem. In the past 10 years, the price of P1.0 pitch LED direct display products has dropped by almost 90%. If this speed is maintained, the price of Samsung's THE WALL that costs millions today may only be tens of thousands of yuan in 10 years, and it will enter the ordinary color TV and commercial display market on a large scale, and then it can consume incremental micro LED production capacity on a large scale. ——The premise is that mass transfer and glass-based technology continue to make breakthroughs to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Today's technology convergence may be tomorrow's key adversary
Regarding the selection of next-generation display technology, "the core is still the technical level and maturity"! Industry insiders pointed out that theoretically, in addition to micro LED splicing dominating the large screen display market, from XR micro display to 100-inch large-screen color TV, micro LED and OLED two major technologies can be done.
"Micro, small, medium, and large display technologies are all available, and only super-large projects belong to micro LEDs independently"! This inevitably brings a certain possibility of competition. That is, today's Samsung seems to be the layout of the micro LED THE WALL in the size of the OLED, which is not a static necessity. It will inevitably change with the development of technology and technology. Among them, which technology category can take the lead in breaking through the yield and cost constraints has become the key.
The good news is that whether it is in the further research and development and progress of OLED technology, or the continuous expansion and upgrading of micro LED, the mainland display industry chain is at the forefront of the world. The proportion of production capacity reserves has reached or exceeded half of the global share. "Innovation is thriving and thriving. In the entire display future industry, we do not have a blank shortcoming! Industry experts pointed out that the choice of the next generation of the domestic display industry chain is not to "bet on a certain technology", but to "want all". In the words of a well-known technology V: not only is it far ahead, but it is necessary to take the lead in clearance!