2019 may not be a prosperous year for LED manufacturers given the market uncertainties resulting from the changing global politics. Yet, industry players continue their technology developments and expect Mini LED to revive the stagnant market.

Mini LED, as an improved version of conventional LED, provides refined diming zones when serving as backlight and can be utilized in curved displays when coupled with flexible substrates. Since last year, several LED makers including Lextar have begun shipping Mini LED backlight products for high end applications such as gaming monitors and gaming notebooks.

LED producers in Taiwan believe that Mini LED could compete with OLED with its high display performance and the advantages of long life time and temperature resistance.

Everlight suggested that fine pitch displays would be a fast growing application for Mini LED. The company has showcased a taillight adopting Mini LED at NEPCON Japan 2019 which shows texts and images with a display with a pitch size of 0.9mm.

LED driver IC developer Macroblock has been supplying its driver IC for Samsung’s fine pitch cinema display and is developing Mini LED and Micro LED with the Korean giant. Macroblock is believed to be capable of mass producing Mini LED driver IC.

Harvatek also started to send samples of its Mini LED products and expects to share the market of gaming and automotive display backlighting with mass production scheduled after 2Q19.

Another Taiwan-based LED packager, Unity Opto, will receive investment for Mini and Micro LED development. According to Unity Opto, it will cooperate with its clients such as BOE and SONY to develop diversified Mini/Micro LED products.