According to a report from TechNews, citing Korean media outlet The Elec, Apple was exploring two options for applying the color filter to the OLED panel intended for the more affordable Vision Pro device.

The report from The Elec indicates that this yet-to-be-named MR device from Apple will use a panel that is based on a glass board with white OLED deposited on it, topped by an RGB color filter to create various colors—a method known as W-OLED+CF. For resolution, Apple is thinking about 1,500ppi.

The report points out that since this device will use a glass board, it is not OLEDoS (OLED on silicon), different from the current Vision Pro that uses Sony’s OLEDoS technology with a resolution of 3,400ppi.

The report mentions that Apple is considering two approaches to apply the color filter
for this new device. The first approach is to directly form the color filter on the thin-film encapsulation (TFE) that covers the panel. The second, more standard approach, involves forming the color filter on a glass board and then combining it with another glass board with W-OLED deposited on it, making the W-OLED glass board the base and the color filter board the top.

Apple is leaning towards the first approach—forming the filter directly on TFE—as it would require only one glass board, making the MR device thinner, according to the report from The Elec.

However, the color filter formation of TFE demands a low-temperature process to avoid damaging the OLED, which makes it more challenging, as the report from The Elec mentions. Samsung currently uses this technique of directly forming the color filter on its foldable phones, which is known as color filter on encapsulation (CoE).

However, according to the report, Apple aims for a resolution of 1,500ppi, but the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 inner panel has a resolution of just 374ppi. To achieve such high resolution, additional technological costs will be involved.

The report indicates that Samsung remains the most likely supplier of W-OLED+CF panels for Apple’s new MR product.

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(Photo credit: Apple)

In recent years, the LED display market has seen shifting trends and demand, creating both opportunities and challenges. How should LED companies respond to these changes? At the 2024 TrendForce Self-Luminous Display Industry Seminar, TrendForce analysts discussed the future growth drivers for the LED display market, analyzing the outlook for emerging applications and the competitive landscape in the industry.

Due to factors such as government budgets, price competition, and technological rivalry, demand for LED displays in China in 2024 is expected to be moderate.

However, international markets continue to grow, with stable progress in Europe and North America, and strong performance in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In the long term, the LED display market is expected to maintain growth, driven by three main factors:

1. Expansion from Developed to Developing Economies
   China is the global manufacturing base and origin of LED displays. In the first phase, the Chinese market expanded into developed economies overseas. With continuing reductions in LED display costs, the market is entering a second phase, extending into developing economies.
2. Expansion from Government and Large Corporate Clients to Small and Medium Enterprises
   Over more than 20 years, LED display prices have steadily declined, and the client base has expanded from government (B2G) to business (B2B) sectors, with potential for future expansion to consumers (B2C).

For manufacturers, the distribution model has grown in importance, and demand for channel-driven LED displays is rising. Companies are actively adjusting their strategies, establishing distribution networks in China and globally to reach a wider customer base.

3. Expansion from Traditional to Emerging Applications
   Traditional applications for LED displays include corporate meetings, security monitoring, retail exhibitions, public areas, transportation, and outdoor advertising. With advancements in Micro/Mini LED technology, LED displays are increasingly used in emerging applications like LED integrated displays, virtual production, and cinema/home theaters, indicating strong growth potential.

Overall, TrendForce projects that the global LED display market size will reach $7.516 billion in 2024 (up 2.8% YoY) and could grow to $10.2 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7% from 2023 to 2028.

According to a report from MoneyDJ, citing the Reuters, as Chinese display manufacturers have been actively expanding their production capacity and aggressively capturing market share in recent years, it has raised concerns in the U.S. about potential dependence on China for a critical component in military technologies, posing significant security risks.

The Reuters referenced an upcoming report titled “Displays are the New Batteries,” by author Joe McReynolds, who emphasizes that displays are becoming increasingly crucial in computerized military equipment, including fighter jets and augmented reality systems that enable troops to overlay digital information on their battlefield view.

The Reuters pointed out that China’s subsidies for display manufacturers could drive competitors out of the market, potentially leaving the U.S. reliant on China. As a consequence, the market suggests that China’s display industry will be the next target of U.S. sanctions, as the report from MoneyDJ mentiond.

The rapid growth of China’s display industry is largely driven by significant subsidies from the Chinese government, which include low-interest loans, favorable tax rates, and discounted land purchases. It is estimated that these subsidies cover 50% to 70% of the costs associated with display factories, as the report from the Reuters pointed out.

According to the report from MoneyDJ, China has made significant national efforts to support its display industry, gradually surpassing South Korea, which has long dominated the industry.

Due to intense price competition from China, Samsung Display completely exited the LCD industry in June 2022, while LG Display shut down its South Korean LCD TV production line at the end of 2022, as indicated by the report in MoneyDJ.

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(Photo credit: BOE)

As we approach the end of October, how will prices for TV, monitor, and laptop panels shift?

According to TrendForce’s late October panel pricing report, Research Vice President Boyce Fan observed that TV panel prices are stabilizing. Thanks to China’s trade-in program, brands ramped up promotions, and sales during the National Day holiday exceeded expectations, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 20%. This has boosted brand confidence and led to continued stockpiling of TV panels. Panel manufacturers, benefiting from the trade-in policy and production cuts during the holiday, are likely to see TV panel prices stabilize across the board in October.

For small-sized TV panels, demand for 32-inch and 43-inch panels remains steady, and with panel makers controlling production, prices are expected to stabilize. Medium-sized panels, such as 50-inch and 55-inch, are still facing weak demand, but production control could help prices level off.

Meanwhile, large-sized panels, including 65-inch and 75-inch, have seen a strong demand surge, directly benefiting from the trade-in policy. With strict production control of 10.5-generation panels maintaining supply-demand balance, prices are also expected to stabilize.

In the monitor panel market, prices have continued to decline following the trend seen in September as demand enters the off-season. Since late Q3, some panel manufacturers have aggressively negotiated project pricing with brand clients for Q4, exerting pressure on monitor panel prices. Fan noted that the price drop for open-cell panels is expected to widen, with declines ranging from $0.3 to $0.4. Panel module prices for mainstream sizes are projected to fall by $0.2 to $0.3, a more significant drop than the previous month.

As for laptop panels, some brands have slightly revised their Q4 demand upwards to boost production scale, supporting stable shipments of laptop panels. However, some panel manufacturers, in an effort to secure orders, have adopted a more flexible pricing approach, which may affect overall market pricing trends. Currently, average laptop panel prices are expected to remain stable, though high-end IPS models are already seeing a $0.1 drop. By November, panel makers are expected to face increased pressure from clients demanding price cuts, intensifying negotiations on both sides.

In 2024, LED display industry has showed positive signs with the first introduction of LED virtual production technology at Chinese Spring Festival Gala, the debut of the world’s first acoustically transparent LED cinema screen, and the first entry of Olympic event broadcast in Chinese cinema. This, to some extent, reflects the thriving trend of LED display in emerging markets, despite the overall lackluster global economy. Truth be told, what is the actual market situation?

LED Display Sector Expected to Embrace a Brilliant Future

On the demand side, according to TrendForce, while China’s domestic demand recovery has fallen short of expectations, overseas market demand still shows an upward trend, particularly in regions like Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where LED display industry is still in its early stage. Against this backdrop, the overall demand for LED display has been on the rise over the past two years.

On the application side, the potential of emerging applications such as LED virtual production, LED cinema screen, and LED All-in-One display is highly recognized. Although growth has slowed down in 2023, these markets are still greeted by high market enthusiasm, and have seen market size gradually expand.

TrendForce predicts that shipment of LED All-in-One display will exceed 6,000 units in 2024, compared to about 4,000 units in the past two years.

With respect to LED cinema, TrendForce estimates that the global installed base of LED cinema screen will reach 160 units this year. Given that the total market size of global high-end LED cinema screen is 30,000 units, while the current penetration rate is only about 0.5%, there is still significant room for the development of LED display technology in this market. Moreover, cinemas are becoming more proactive in adopting LED screens.

In China, approximately 40 LED cinema halls were opened as of July 2024, among which 19 halls were newly added in 2024.

As to LED virtual production, the total number of LED virtual production studios in China has reached 41 to date, with 10 new studios added this year.

Currently, China has attached more importance to the development of both LED virtual production and LED cinema screen industries by launching related supporting policies, which further boosts the confidence of the industry chain and signals a promising market outlook.

On the supply side, LED display manufacturers continue to leverage innovative technologies to drive growth in emerging markets, deploying diversified packaging technologies for various application scenarios. Among them, COB (Chip on Board) display has enjoyed rapid growth and MiP (Mini/Micro LED in Package) LED display seen increasing demand in recent years, which enable LED display to open up more application markets.

Overall, TrendForce remains sanguine about the prospect for LED display industry. It estimates that the demands for LED display in both Chinese and international markets are projected to trend upward, fueled by fine pitch and Mini LED displays. According to TrendForce’s 2024 Global LED Video Wall Market Analysis Report, the market size of LED video wall is expected to grow to USD 10.7 billion in 2027.

A More Innovative Supporting Industrial Chain Being in Demand

LED display has expanded its footprint from professional display to commercial display and consumer display fields, and now it starts integrating cross-disciplinary technologies and becomes a non-negligible part of our daily life in diversified and creative forms, which undoubtedly ushers in a brand-new era of LED display. For LED manufacturers, opening up the market is just the first step, and the next step is to fully tap this vast potential.

Taking the market adoption rate of Mini/Micro LED products and the penetration rate of COB (Chip on Board) and MiP (Mini/Micro LED in Package) technologies into consideration, however, LED display in emerging application fields is in its relatively nascent state. In face of the global urgent demand for energy conservation and the ever-increasing consumer expectation for display performance, LED manufacturers have to cross some hurdles.

In recent years, countries across the world have launched relevant energy efficiency standards for different technologies and products. For instance, the first Chinese mandatory national energy efficiency standard for LED display, Minimum Allowable Values of Energy Efficiency and Energy Efficiency Grades for Displays (GB21520-2023), was officially implemented on June 1, 2024, under which LED display will become more energy-saving. It specifies the energy efficiency grades for LED All-in-One display, divided into three grades: 3.0 (Grade 1), 2.2 (Grade 2), and 1.5 (Grade 3). In light of this standard, LED manufacturers are required to develop truly low-temperature, energy-efficient displays based on highly efficient technology and reliable quality.

Speaking of the applications, virtual production, cinema screen, and All-in-One display demand high image quality, color precision and smoothness, HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging, high refresh rate, and high grayscale performance, which translate into continuously shrinking pixel pitch for LED display. However, in the course of seeking higher performance, LED display still faces varied challenges in reference to power consumption, display quality, and cost reduction, specifically including increased power consumption and temperature, low grayscale effect under low current condition, coupling at high grayscale, discontinuous grayscale, maintaining color depth at high refresh rate, and how to arrange IC as pixel density increases.

It’s plain to see that while high-performance products are sought after, the innovation need of the supporting industry chain for LED display is rising as well, and LED driver IC, an indispensable part of LED display, presents a key in addressing these challenges.

Take power consumption, for example: for a P0.9 COB 4K display, driver IC can account for up to 72% of total power consumption, and highly-integrated, common-cathode driver IC is considered as a perfect fit, which has proven to be energy-efficient and able to achieve low-temperature, energy-saving screens. It’s learned that common-cathode structure can reduce power consumption by 13% compared to traditional common-anode structure.

Although highly-integrated, common-cathode structure has not yet been the mainstream solution, it is deemed to be an inevitable trend in this field. From Xm-Plus’ highly-integrated, common-cathode LED driver ICs, we can find that its outstanding features have been exemplified by a series of real cases.

Xm-Plus Keeps Pushing the Limit to Empower the Innovation of LED Display Industry

According to LEDinside, Xm-Plus has rolled out several highly integrated, common-cathode driver IC series based on its green common-cathode technology and patented low grayscale calibration technology in recent years, including XM10486G, XM10480G, and XM11202G. They are characterized by the company’s exclusive accurate calibration scale, excelling in grayscale effect, low grayscale calibration, and energy efficiency.

XM10480G has been adopted by renowned LED display manufacturers such as Unilumin, QSTECH, HCP and Showho LED. For instance, XM10480G was integrated in HCP Mini COB P0.9 LED display, supporting 40 scanning, 7680Hz refresh rate, 16-bit color depth and 1000nits brightness.

As a good match for virtual production, XM10486G has been included in the product list of Brompton, a UK-based leading provider of LED video processor for virtual production. Brompton has partnered with numerous well-known display manufacturers such as Sony, Unilumin, Absen, Aoto and AUO, to name just a few.

Notably, Xm-Plus has upgraded its driver ICs built on the existing technologies and performance with the debut of XM11206G in July this year, which boasts high bit depth, high contrast ratio, and low power consumption.

In terms of display effect, the highly-integrated XM11206G can achieve 18-bit high color depth, support low grayscale effect at high refresh rate (with a 16-fold improvement in refresh rate at low grayscale, addressing flicker issues visible to the human eyes), and allows customizable scanning lines to simplify display panel design. It also supports front-end high frame rate input (23Hz to 480Hz), with a visual refresh rate of up to 15,360Hz, making it suitable for high-frame-rate scenarios like 3D displays.

Regarding power consumption, XM11206G adopts an energy-saving architecture, cutting static power consumption at black-screen mode by 20% compared to its predecessor IC Power/Pixel, making it an ideal solution for fine-pitch LED display and low-temperature screen.

From a cost perspective, as an advanced version of XM11202G, XM11206G reduces the number of ICs needed by increasing scanning, helping customers lower system costs. Currently, XM11206G has already gained in-house validation by major manufacturers and is incrementally being integrated into terminal projects.

The comprehensive upgrades of Xm-Plus’ highly-integrated, common-cathode driver ICs not only marks a timely response to LED display industry’s new needs, but also reflects the company’s ongoing breakthroughs in exploring new display frontiers.

In addition to upgrading existing products, Xm-Plus has also set sights on developing more innovative products that align with the industry trend, like XM11204G designed for four-chip virtual pixel applications. This driver IC supports three power inputs and independent current adjustment for four channels, allowing backend manufacturers to improve display effect while reducing overall cost.

Virtual pixel technology has been put into the limelight since last year, but it is still immature in both technology and the development of supporting industry chain, leading to lackluster display performance. Further improvement requires the collaboration across the whole industry chain and other fields like supporting software algorithms. Still, its potential is widely and highly anticipated.

Xm-Plus points out that 8K UHD applications are driving LED display industry toward ultra-fine-pitch display field, but <P0.7 display faces cost and production yield challenges. In this context, virtual pixel technology will be a good option. With the shrinking of pixel pitch and the optimization of virtual pixel algorithms by system manufacturers, the overall image quality will see substantial improvement.

Looking ahead to the future, Xm-Plus, rooted in LED display industry, plans to actively collaborate with its partners in LED display industry chain to tackle technical and cost-related issues in the MLED era, jointly promoting the innovation and the renewal of LED display industry.

(Photo credit: Xm-Plus)