Micro LED since 2014 has been receiving attention. The industry is slowly becoming familiar with the new display technology that motivated Apple to acquire LuxVue. However, in 2008 a company already foresaw Micro LED to be a future display trend and started related development despite lack of market appetite. When the market started noticing Mini/Micro LED UK-based optic tech firm Optovate had already patented ideas to render various applications featuring these microscopic technologies.

As time is moving forward to the second quarter of 2018, more and more rumblings and updates about Micro/Mini LED emerged and have been circulating in the industry. In February, LEDinside collected and revealed information of Micro LED development from nearly 50 companies around the globe. Here, we would like to share some progress updates released after that from 10 companies.

As a popular product in the LED display industry, Micro LED is regarded as a leader of next-generation display technology. A large number of manufacturers at home and abroad have paid attention to Micro LED, which has promising market prospects.

With the development of display technology, the panel industry will no longer only focus on the supply and demand. Instead, more emphasis has been placed on the quality and specs upgrade of panels in order to increase the value of display products. This trend has motivated the display panel makers towards better specs, such as high resolution, curved, ultra-thin, lightweight, bendable, high dynamic HDR, high contrast, and wide color gamut. In this way, the displays will be able to present more natural colors and vivid image.

In recent year, Mini LED has undoubtedly emerged as a new sector where LED companies and panel vendors actively enter. The reason is that the traditional LED backlight has been developing for many years, reaching a bottleneck in technology; the profit is relatively low as well. Meanwhile, OLED displays, which feature thinness and flexibility, are invading into the backlight display market. As the result, manufacturers that do not worked on OLED displays have turned to the development of Mini LED, a new product that is highly competitive in terms of function and cost.

The Society for Information Display (SID) and Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) announced the complete agenda for the SID Display Week 2018 Business Conference. Featuring many of the leading companies, analysts and industry executives in the display industry, the Business Conference kicks off the well-attended Display Week Business Track and will be held on Monday, May 21, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at the Los Angeles Convention Center. 

According to media reports, Huawei, OPPO and Xiaomi are worried about insufficient OLED panel production, so they plan to use Mini LED-lit LCD displays for their smartphones in 2H18. Despite the fact that this rumor is not confirmed yet, the LED supply chain already pins its hope on Mini LED.

Optovate has revealed further details of its innovative micro-LED technology, following its first technology announcement in March 2018. Optovate has since 2008 been developing catadioptric micro-optic arrays to enhance the benefits of micro-LED, mini-LED and OLED displays and also a patterned laser lift-off (p-LLO) micro-LED transfer process.

Over the past two years, Micro LED, regarded as the new generation display technology, has attracted a lot of attention. Seeing great potential in this new technology, a large number of manufacturers have scrambled for it. According to LEDinside’s latest report "1Q18 Micro LED Next-Generation Display Technology Market Report- 2018 Micro LED and Mini LED Industry Trend", the market value of Micro LED is expected to reach US $2.891 billion in 2025.

Mini LED is a new display technology in Asia. AU Optronics (AUO) on March 8 released the world's first Mini LED-based product line, including a gaming monitor, a gaming laptop, and a small-sized display for VR wearable devices. The company will begin to ship its Mini LED products in 2H18 and the large-scale gaming monitor will be the first to be on the market, said Michael Tsai, General Manager at AUO.

Before we can see real Micro LED, sized below 100µm, Mini LED (100-250µm) will be rolled out to the market first. People must be curious about which consumer electronics will Mini LED choose and how will it enter those markets.

Micro LED display developer VueReal announced on March 6 the initial closing of its $10.5 million (USD) Series A funding led by the venture arm of a large Asian company and a leading North American vendor focused on startups with emerging technology.

The TFT-LCD market has already become a red ocean. Korea and Japan take the lead in the OLED market. In terms of display technologies, Taiwan should seize the chance to pioneer the development of Micro LED if it wants to secure a competitive share in the global display market in the future.

A new ultrathin, elastic display that fits snugly on the skin can show the moving waveform of an electrocardiogram recorded by a breathable, on-skin electrode sensor. Combined with a wireless communication module, this integrated biomedical sensor system - called "skin electronics" - can transmit biometric data to the cloud.

Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2018 in the Netherlands is an international well-known exhibition for display. This international exhibition is taking place from February 6 to 9 in the Netherlands and has caused a lot of attention in the digital display industry.

Innolux yesterday (February 6) demonstrated a 10.1-inch AM Mini LED display at a shareholder meeting. This new technology will be officially commercialized in the automotive electronics market, said Chin-Lung Ting, Executive Vice President of Innolux Corporation. Before that, the Taiwan-based company will continue the development of other devices.

The emergence of Micro LED does steal some of the limelight from OLED that has been dominating the television market for the past few years, but can Micro LED really challenge OLED?

A series of acts of Samsung developing Micro LED has been gradually unveiled. From the rumor about its investment in Taiwan-based Micro LED startup PlayNitride to the recent demonstration of its gigantic Micro LED modular TV The Wall at CES 2018, they more or less suggest Samsung’s attempt to rival other display makers with the Micro LED technology.

To be fair, none of the products launched in 2017 can arouse such a heated discussion as the iPhone X did. Its futuristic appearance, including the notch at the top of its OLED screen, attracted a lot of attention. Apart from that, the public also anticipated it to launch Apple Watch Series 3 featuring a Micro LED display but it did not happen.

Self-driving car, electric vehicle and internet of vehicles are three major trends of automotive panels. Innolux takes part in the 2018 CES to exhibit the world’s first AM Mini LED automotive panel.

LG Display is showcasing cutting-edge display products including the world’s first 65-inch UHD rollable OLED display that prove its global leadership in all areas of displays at CES 2018 in Las Vegas.

LEDinside this time collected insights on Micro LED from seven experts. What do they think about Micro LED and the feasibility of its mass production? What are the elements they think Micro LED should have to be able to win the competition against LCD and OLED?

The new display technology Micro LED actually has a history of over a decade. After Apple acquired LuxVue Technology, it officially became famous. Its properties- high resolution, high brightness, real-time response, and low power consumption- win hearts of many A-list high-tech companies such as Apple, Sony, Google and Facebook, as well as companies in the display industry.

Inorganic microLEDs are the next big thing in displays, not as backlights for LCDs, but like OLEDs, as the actual light emitting pixel elements, ranging from applications in Micro-displays for Augmented /Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to wearables such as Smartwatches and Cellphones. Unlike OLED displays, however, they are far more robust and long-lived, and most importantly, far more efficient and much brighter, making them viable even for larger displays, such as video walls in advertising and in cinema in place of projection.  But to make the technology cost effective, manufacturing challenges abound, particularly as pixel sizes shrink in next generation micro-displays. For example, various coatings must be rapidly deposited in a precise, controlled manner, such as the Quantum Dots (QDs) integrated with the LEDs used in larger displays either to sharpen the color characteristics of traditional phosphors, or fully replace them in micro-displays, relying solely on QDs for color conversion. Better technology is needed for reliably depositing the various costly materials used, and even for rapidly assembling or arraying the microLEDs themselves.

Mini LED has a high chance to help Taiwanese LED manufacturers reclaim the leading position in the high-end backlight market in 2018. It rekindles Taiwanese firms’ hope against the ‘OLED attack’ from Korea, expected Bingjie Li, Chairman of Epistar.

There are many recent articles explaining mini LED or Micro LED. Some are correct, but some are not. Let LEDinside explain and tell you the differences between fine-pitch LED, mini LED and micro LED.