"Electronics enthusiasts report (Wen / Huangshan Ming) recently, some analysts reported that Apple will transition its devices to mini LED technology from this year, and DIGITIMES recently quoted supply chain sources as saying that Apple will adopt Mini LED technology on iPad pro and MacBook Pro released in 2021, and the application of mini LED will cover other application products in 2022.
Coincidentally, Samsung adopted quantum dot Mini LED backlight technology on Neo qled TV released earlier this month. In addition, enterprises including Xiaomi, LG and TCL have launched Mini LED related products. Some people in the industry believe that 2021 will be the first year of commercial use of mini led.
Why are mini LEDs favored by enterprises?
According to yole research data, the global Mini LED display devices will increase from 3.24 million in 2019 to 80.7 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 90%; According to ledinside's prediction, the market scale of small spacing LED will reach US $9.7 billion in 2024, and the compound growth rate will reach 30-35%, of which the market scale of mini LED is expected to reach US $5-6 billion.
According to a supply chain source, many manufacturers have started preparing goods in the fourth quarter of 2020. For example, Samsung has inspected the mini LED panel production line in Vietnam and is expected to establish more than 50 Mini LED production lines in Vietnam, with a total investment of 240 million yuan. According to incomplete statistics, the total investment in the research and development of mini LED technology in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain this year will reach 26.5 billion yuan.
For example, TCL Huaxing has 140 patents in the field of micro led, ranking first in the world; Liad plans to raise an additional 1.5 billion, mainly to invest in intelligent display projects and overweight micro LEDs; Huacan optoelectronics will invest 1.2 billion in mini / micro LED; The mini / micro display chip industrialization project of San'an is expected to be put into operation in March 2021; The first phase of Hongli Zhihui Mini / micro LED semiconductor display project in packaging has also been officially put into operation.
Mini LED technology can be regarded as an upgraded version of LCD. From traditional lcd led to OLED, display panel manufacturers have always wanted to improve the contrast of the picture, that is, to make the color display more pure, such as making black darker.
The traditional LED display uses a whole backlight to display the content by illuminating the liquid crystal pixels in different polarization states. This way may cause a small amount of light to penetrate when the pixels display black, that is, the light leakage of the traditional LED. OLED does not have this problem. Because each pixel is composed of a group of independent LED diodes, black pixels can be completely extinguished, and the contrast is theoretically infinite.
Of course, it should be noted that although each pixel of OLED can be turned off separately, even if it is displayed in pure black, the pixels will not be turned off completely, and the pixels will still be turned on with extremely low brightness (such as 0.3nit). The purpose of this is to avoid the delay of pixels from off to start. The delay is also different when the screen displays different colors, and the delay is also affected by environmental factors such as temperature.
Although OLED has higher contrast, simple structure, small thickness and bendability, OLED still has some problems. For example, the subpixels with three different colors are composed of different materials, so they have different service life and are easy to age after long-term use, resulting in screen burning, that is, the color on the screen is difficult to fade. The shorter the lifetime, the more area it can compensate, which is why the OLED pixel arrangement is unusual.
Although the LCD also burns the screen, it is much lighter than OLED. Therefore, the LCD screen can arrange sub pixels in a 1:1:1 manner.
In addition, although OLED can control individual pixels, it is difficult for the main control chip to control so many pixels very accurately, so the color accuracy of OLED screen is also a big problem. Apple didn't fully adopt OLED until the iPhone 12, on the one hand because of the high cost, on the other hand because of the color alignment problem.
The emergence of mini LED is to combine the advantages of LED and OLED. It can not only have the contrast of OLED, but also have the color accuracy of LED.
Data source: ledinside
In an interview with electronics enthusiasts, a marketing manager of Zhouming technology said that at present, mini LED is mainly used in the field of super large screen, such as outdoor advertising, large-scale conferences, live broadcasting of stadiums and gymnasiums. Compared with OLED screen, it can be repaired more conveniently, replaced for bad points, and the cost is lower.
In addition, for apple, there have been fewer OLED manufacturers. The screens are basically purchased from several manufacturers such as Samsung and LG, which is contrary to Apple's multi supplier strategy. There are more Mini LED manufacturers. In addition to Samsung, Sony and LG, there are also lyade, Zhouming technology, abison, Shanghai Sansi and LianJian Optoelectronics in China. They have more choices to effectively reduce the risk of Apple's supply chain.
Products up to tens of thousands of yuan are expensive Mini LEDs
At present, there are two application modes of mini led. The mini LED has always been used for direct display, while the other is to use the mini LED as the backlight of LCD panel, that is, the mini led Blu commonly used in the industry.
According to the prediction of DSCC data, the shipment of mini LED backlight will increase from 500000 in 2020 to 8.9 million in 2021. According to the data of relevant institutions, the mini LED backlight TV will reach 4.4 million in 2021, accounting for about 2% of the overall TV market. The mini LED backlight technology has become a comprehensive solution for LCD high-quality display and lightweight.
Comparison between Mini led and ordinary backlight | BOE
It is worth noting that although Mini LED has many advantages over OELD, at present, mini LED is generally used for professional reference level monitoring screen and relatively high-end TV and display products. A very important reason is the cost.
The marketing manager of Zhouming technology revealed that there will be a demand for large screens in many institutions, and small spacing LED displays will be used. The price of an 8K * 2K resolution P1.2 screen is about 600000. If the mini LED screen with smaller spacing is used, the price will be higher. And the price will rise by leaps and bounds with each smaller distance.
Cost division of mini led industrial chain | Cathay Pacific Securities
Why Mini LED is so expensive, the marketing manager said that there are several reasons, such as materials, chips, technology, talents, etc. From the implementation principle of mini led, in short, it is to split the whole backlight of traditional led into small light beads, and the light beads will be on in the display area, while the backlight will be turned off in the non display area.
Although the principle is simple, it is not so easy to realize this function. It requires hundreds to tens of thousands of lamp beads with consistent brightness and color temperature in a panel. Obviously, the cost will not be cheap. Taking Apple's Pro display XDR as an example, there are only 576 light beads in the backlight, but in order to ensure the uniformity of the backlight, the top LED light beads are selected, so the price is about 40000 yuan.
Another representative, such as the supreme commemorative edition of the master series of Xiaomi TV, put 15000 led beads in the 82 inch screen. It is reported that the cost of a mini led plus the MOS tube that lights up the beads reaches about 1 yuan, which also makes its price reach 49999 yuan. Of course, the price of three-star TV of similar products has reached about 6 digits.
The cost of mini LED TV is mainly affected by the number of LEDs. Some analysts believe that if 16000 LEDs are used for 65 inch UHD TV with mini LED backlight, the production cost will be about 650-700 dollars, which will reduce 20% - 30% compared with OLED TV of the same size. However, if 40000 LEDs are used, the cost gap between Mini LED TV and OLED TV of the same size is not obvious.
However, in terms of lamp bead control, TCL proposes to use glass as the substrate and LCD array manufacturing process to produce an active control system with thousands of partitions. In addition, TCL also designs a 2t1c pixel driving architecture to actively control the switch of led through TFT, which has cost advantages while ensuring the display of high partitions.
In addition to the cost of LED beads themselves, to put tens of thousands of beads on the backlight board, you need to apply a large amount of transfer technology. At present, there are three main transfer modes in the market: traditional crystal fixing machine, needle type crystal fixing machine and laser transfer mode. The most cost-effective is the traditional solid crystal machine, which is usually used in TV products. The needle fixed crystal machine is relatively more efficient and the corresponding chip size is relatively small, but there is no limit on the size of PCB panel. Laser transfer has the highest yield, but the price is more expensive. At the same time, it also needs to go through the film arrangement process.
Therefore, in the mini LED backlight products, its backlight accounts for about half of the cost. However, a survey report released by a research institution shows that by 2022, the cost of mini LED backlight display is expected to be lower than that of OLED display, so that mini LED backlight display has certain market competitiveness.
At present, the manufacturing cost of mini led Blu products is higher than that of traditional LCD and OLED displays. However, as manufacturers continue to improve process technology and manufacturing yield, the future cost is expected to decrease by 15-20% per year.
Domestic manufacturers who want to dominate the future display market with mini LED
From the current display panel market, the OLED field is still dominated by Korean enterprises, such as Samsung and LG. However, in the LCD market, domestic enterprises such as BOE, vicino and TCL Huaxing have occupied a powerful position in the global market. The maturity of mini LED technology will drive the structural growth of LCD market.
Of course, at present, the size of mini led beads is mostly P2 (200) μ m) Left and right, but compared with 1-10 of micro LED μ M size is still too large, which makes it temporarily unable to be used in tablet, mobile phone and other devices, while mini led Blu can be combined with LCD and applied on large TV panels.
Especially in recent years, despite the rapid publicity momentum of OLED TV, the market performance has been tepid. The problem lies in its screen burning and brightness, and these shortcomings have been amplified in large panel application scenarios. Mini led Blu products can solve these problems well, and the cost of LCD panel is low. The price of low-end 65 inch panel products is only about 2000 yuan.
It should be acknowledged that the current Mini led still has some problems to be solved, such as power consumption. Due to the use of a large number of light beads, its power consumption soared. The power consumption of Xiaomi TV master's supreme commemorative edition reached 700W. Although TCL's Thunderbird 75r635c uses only 3840 light beads, its power consumption also requires 480W.
The second problem caused by high power consumption is heat. For example, Apple's Pro display XDR has only 576 light beads, but the heat makes Apple have to open hundreds of cooling holes behind its display screen to suppress it. The calorific value of TV panels with more lamp beads can be imagined. These problems still need time and technology to solve.
Of course, as Korean manufacturers gradually launched the LCD market, domestic panel manufacturers began to gain a firm foothold in the LCD market, and the emergence of mini led also gave new growth opportunities to the LCD market. When OLED is limited by technology, domestic manufacturers can rely on mini led to seize more market share.
Seeing the opportunity to surpass Korean manufacturers and ascend the global panel market, domestic enterprises began to increase their research and development of mini LED technology.
This time, the domestic industrial chain is ready to go in the mini LED market., Read the full text“
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