2018 has been a tough year for panel producers due to the dropping panel price caused by oversupply. Chinese panel makers are still expanding their production capacities for LCD and OLED displays, putting pressures on other industry players. Samsung is closing its 8.5 generation production line in 2019 and shifting the focus to QD-OLED panels in response to the price competition. LG Display also plans to expand its OLED production capacities in China and Korea targeting large sized TV displays. It is estimated that by 2020, the OLED investment of LG Displ...

Sweden-based Fagerhult announced on December 21 that it has signed an agreement to acquire iGuzzini, the Italian lighting group for EUR 385 million (US$ 439 million). According to Fagerhult, the price of EUR 385 million will be paid with 74 percent in cash and 26 percent in new Fagerhult shares. The transaction is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2019. With iGuzzini joining the Fagerhult Group will, the largest lighting company in the Nordic countries will increase its presence in Italy, Switzerland, Spain and North America. The combined compan...

Unilumin Group, a Chinese LED application supplier, has collaborated with Maverick AV Solutions for expanding the market penetration of LED fine pitch displays in Europe. Unilumin manufacturers LED products ranging from 0.9mm to 12mm pixel pitch. The company also operates in a variety of verticals including command and control rooms, broadcast studios, corporate atria, meeting spaces and digital signage. With the partnership with Maverick AV Solutions, Unilumin is going to increase its presence in the European market. The Maverick team will push the LED prod...

Macroblock, the LED driver IC supplier, announced that it has broken through the production bottleneck of Mini LED products and expects to begin volume manufacturing in 1Q19. According to Macroblock, its flip-chip Mini LED performs better in luminous efficacy, heat dissipation and light distribution uniformity compared to the conventional package method. The company said that it has solved the production difficulties of Mini LED products with a production yield rate of 99.99 percent. Macroblock’s driver IC was adopted by Samsung for its LED cinem...

Bowery Farming, an indoor autonomous farming startup from New York, has raised US$ 90 million in Series B funding from investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures). and CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi. The company began operating in February 2017 and has opened two vertical farming facilities near New York since then. Bowery Farming applies technologies including robotics, machine learning and predictive analytics to autonomously operate the growing conditions for the crops. Vegetables are grown with controlled environment with optimized LED lighting spectr...

Velodyne Lidar announced its collaboration with Nikon as the optical technology company invests US$ 25 million in Velodyne. The two companies have begun discussions for a multifaceted business alliance. The purpose of the strategic partnership is to combine Nikon’s optical and precision technologies with Velodyne’s sensor technology. According to Velodyne, the relationship aims to advance the timeline for manufacturing and mass production of LiDAR for the autonomous and advanced safety global market. The parties have begun investigating a wide-ranging business...

Having looked back at the industry updates of Micro LED technology, let’s keep on reviewing the technology breakthroughs of Micro LED in the past year. KAIST Team Develops Flexible Vertical Micro LED to Cure Hair loss Problem In January, a researcher team at KAIST announced the development of flexible vertical micro LEDs (f-VLEDs). These f-VLEDs achieved optical power density (30 mW/mm2) three times higher than that of lateral Micro LEDs and can be applied to optogenetics for controlling the behavior of neuron cells and brains with...

German company TRUMPF is going to acquire Philips Photonics, the VCSEL production units of Royal Philips, to expand its product portfolio for 3D sensing and data transmission applications. Back in November Philips Photonics announced a milestone of shipping one billion VCSELs and soon after that the company was said to have increased the capacity of VCSEL production in Ulm, Germany. And now it is selling 100 percent of the operation to TRUMPF. The two companies are planning to finish the operation transaction by the second quarter of 2019 and neith...

For the LED and panel industry, the year of 2018 had a dramatic start with Samsung’s revealing of its Micro LED TV “The Wall” at the CES show. Since then, players in the industry have been releasing their achievements related to the next generation display technology. Several innovative solutions and applications have been disclosed in the past year including large size displays and wearable devices. As LEDinside has continued to track the progress of Micro LED development, we would like to list the significant breakthroughs and industry updates...

Taiwan-based optical disc maker RITEK announced that its subsidiary, RiTdisplay and Luminit, a light sharping diffuser supplier in the U.S., are going to set up a joint venture in Taiwan focusing on automotive lighting. The RITEK group began its business in optical disc production and has expanded its operation to storage media, nano-technology, OLED displays and others. RiTdisplay is the subsidiary of RITEK which focuses on OLED development and production. On the other hand, Luminit specializes in light sharping technology for lighting, display, automot...

By the end of last month, Bloomberg reported that Bain Capital, a U.S.-based private equity firm, has been eyeing a buyout of Osram. Soon after that, another private equity company, Carlyle, reportedly joined the list of potential bidders for the German lighting technology group, according to Financial Times. The report of Financial Times noted that two people directly involved in the situation have confirmed Carlyle’s interest in the buyout of Osram. But neither Carlyle nor Osram commented on the information. (Image: Osram) Osram has been through a fina...

Nichia and Seoul Semiconductor, the two LED manufacturers in Japan and South Korea, have respectively reported updates regarding their intellectual property issues with the Taiwan-based company, Everlight. Nichia has confirmed its YAG patent in Germany as Everlight and its German subsidiary WOFI have withdrawn their appeal in November. The Japanese company then requested Everlight and WOFI to provide the rendering account information for related white LED products. Nichia is going to request compensation for the patent infringement from Everlight based o...

The U.S.-based LED giant Cree has adjusted its management team. After the new CFO and chairman were appointed and the new members of the board of directors were elected in the six months, the head of the LED division has stepped down, reported Triangle Business Journal. The executive vice president and general manager of Cree’s LED business unit, David Emerson, has left the position. Claude Demby, formerly senior vice president of strategy and corporate development, took over the duty. (Image: Cree) The company has been through a shuffle in the sen...

Osram announced that it is providing several of its components for automotive lighting and biometric identification solutions for microSNAP, Rinspeed’s concept vehicle, which will be presented at CES 2019. Rinspeed’s microSNAP is the latest version of the company’s autonomous concept car which has a chassis to contain the drivetrain and most of the IT while connecting to various body types. (Image: Osram) Outside the vehicle, microSNAP uses Osram’s Eviyos, a hybrid LED for smart headlights, which contains individually controlled pi...

Japan Display Inc. (JDI) has been negotiating with Chinese companies and investors to receive financial supports of JPY 50 billion (US$ 440.65 million), reported NHK. The potential investors include mobile component producer Ofilm, automotive component manufacturer Minth Group and the Silk Road Fund. With the support, the Chinese investors will hold 33 percent or more of the share of JDI, suppressing the current major shareholder INCJ, who owns 25.29 percent of the share. In addition to the investment, the Chinese investors were also reportedly offering a ...

Plessey, the UK-based optoelectronic technology solutions provider, announced that it is going to demonstrate AR and VR glasses powered by Micro LEDs at CES 2019. Plessey’s Micro LEDs are put in action for AR applications with Vuzix, who has collaborated with Plessy in the development of Micro LED smart glasses. According to Plessey, its Micro LEDs offer 10 times the resolution, 100 times the contrast ratio, and up to 1,000 times the luminance compared to traditional OLEDs. Furthermore, the device uses only half the power consumption, doubling b...

The “Micro LED Technology Research Contest” held by LEDinside has received numerous articles providing innovative and practical solutions to enhance the manufacturing of Micro LED during June 6th – September 10th, 2018. LEDinside was very excited to learn all these novel ideas and technologies offered by different institutes and companies from all over the world. Selecting the winning articles was a tough task as most of them have proposed unique perspectives on how to solve the mass transfer issue of Micro LED or improve their yield rate. 

According to WitsView, a division of TrendForce, the glut ratio of panels is expected to increase to 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, leading to a drop in panel price. Facing the difficulties of the oversupply and decreased price, panel producers have shifted their focus to niche applications in order to break through the low price competition. Innolux has developed a high resolution sickness-free VR headset which won an innovative product award. The company aims to expand its presence in the growing gaming market with its VR headset and expects to mass produce the pr...

With its continuous development in Mini LED, Harvatek projects that Mini LED products will take around 15 percent of its revenue next year, driving its business performance in 2019. The LED manufacturer focuses on display products including notebooks, gaming monitors, mobile devices and automotive displays. The shipment of its Mini LED product, 4 in 1 Mini COB and RGB Mini LED COB, has been processed by its display clients. Harvatek expects that its Mini LED product shipments will be boosted by the second quarter of 2019, bringing profits to the com...

Samsung Electronics announced that it will close its smartphone manufacturing plants in Tianjin, China, due to the declining sales of its smartphone in the Chinese market. According to the report of Reuters, the operation of Samsung’s smartphone manufacturing in the Tianjin plant will stop by the end of year. But the company will continue the production in Huizhou. Samsung has shifted its production facilities to India and Vietnam not only because its sales in China dropped but also due to the increasing production cost. Electronic Times, a South Korean media...

WaveOptics is a UK-based Augmented Reality (AR) wearable device designer and manufacturer with its diffractive waveguides technology. The company announced that it has raised US$26 million from existing shareholders and new investors. One of its new investor, Goertek, has also signed an exclusive waveguide production partnership with WaveOptics. Goertek designs and produces high-tech consumer electronics. With the partnership with WaveOpics, the two companies aim to mass produce Waveguides’s waveguides for AR wearable applications (Image: WaveOptics) W...

LED manufacturers reported revenue drop for November as the demands decrease in the off-peak season. AOT, the LED company under the Foxconn Group, has posted a revenue of NT$ 332 million (US$ 10.76 million) for November with a decrease of 10.4% MoM and 39.9% YoY. LED backlighting is the major business of the company which accounts for more than 90 percent of its revenue. Therefore, the dropped demands of TV backlight due to seasonality led to the decreased monthly revenue of AOT. (Image: AOT) AOT also began the development of Mini and Micro LE...

Selectronic, a UK-based specialist, has partnered with Chinese LED packager Hongli Zhuihui with a US$ 75 million collaboration agreement. The two companies will work with Taiwanese company Epistar to boost LED automotive product development. Selectronic is a distributor of LEDs in Europe for Hongli. Through the partnership with Epistar, Hongli will buy Epistar’s patented automotive LED chips for the production of automotive LED lighting and the development of automotive LED products. The strategic agreement between the companies will run until O...

A research team in Taiwan announced that its development of OLED lighting is ready for commercial production. According to the research leader, Dr. Jwo-Huei Jou at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan, the team has developed OLED lighting that is similar to candle light which produces softer light source and does not cause harm to the human eye. (Image: ITRI) The OLED research team of NTHU worked with Electronic and Optoelectronic System Research Laboratories at ITRI and WiseChip Semiconductor in the development of low color t...

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com, has opened a plant factory adopting hydroponic technology provided by Mitsubishi Chemical to supply fresh food for its online and offline customers. Through the strategic collaboration with Mitsubishi Chemical, JD.com plans to increase its capability of food production in order to control and monitor the quality of its food products. The company aims to set up to 10 plant factories in China. The newly built facility locates in the Tongzhou District of Beijing and is expected to produce 300 tons of vegetable annually with its 11,040 square...

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) has been one of the technology focuses in the past two years as it is a key technology for automotive vehicles and many other applications. According to “2018 Infrared Sensing Application Market Report” by LEDinside, the market value of LiDAR laser is expected to reach US$ 154 million in 2020. Worldwide LiDAR sensor producers and semiconductor firms have been pushing LiDAR development and extending applications through collaboration with other technology partners. Apart from self-driving technology, LiDAR ...

With the cooperation with INOX Leisure, an India multiplex chain, Samsung has announced that its Cinema LED, Onyx, has launched in Mumbai, the land of Bollywood. Samsung has announced its partnership with PVR Cinemas in August to launch the first Onyx Cinema LED displays in New Delhi. Working with INOX, Samsung now debut the second LED cinema screen in Mumbai. The company plans to install around 20 LED cinema displays all over India by the end of 2019. (Image: Samsung India) “With INOX Onyx, welcome true colors, bring alive t...

LEDVANCE announced that the company will change its manufacturing structure for increasing the integration with its parent company MLS while intensifying the competitiveness of the company in the U.S. and Canada. Meanwhile, LEDVANCE also revealed that its factory in Versailles which produces conventional lighting fixtures will be closed. LEDVANCE has been shifting its production focus from traditional lamps to smart lighting products in the past few years. The acquisition of MLS, the Chinese LED lighting producer, in 2017 has accelerated the transfo...

WitsView, a division of TrendForce, released the latest report for gaming monitors (with a frame rate above 100Hz), noting that the shipments of gaming monitors would reach 5.1 million units in 2018 with an annual growth of 100 percent. The gaming market has been expanding in recent years with promotions such as gaming sport, bringing growing momentum to the PC industry and boosting the demands for high quality monitors. Many LCD monitor makers have entered the gaming monitor market which has high gross margins. In the global shipment ranking of gaming monitor makers, AS...

The fourth quarter is usually the off-peak season for the LED market. Industry players including Lextar and Macroblock have reported lukewarm business performance in November and are expecting growth in 2019 with the booming Mini LED market. Lextar posted its monthly revenue of NT$ 823 million (US$ 26.67 million) for November with a decrease of 6.5% MoM and 7.8% YoY. The company has continued its product shipments including Mini LED backlights, Mini LED RGB modules, fine-pitch displays and VCSEL packages. Meanwhile, it also focuses on further tech...