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)