Taiwan media said that Taiwan's Mini LED technology is mature enough to enter mass production this year. This technology is expected to be commercially available within two years, which will bring significant changes to the global panel industry and threaten the dominant OLED panel technology in Korea.

Technical advantage of Mini LED

At present, OLED panel technology, which has been popularized in smartphone industry and developed rapidly in TV industry, has many technical advantages, such as power saving, light and flexible, but its weakness is also very obvious. That is the burning screen problem. However, due to the short life of mobile phones, the time for users to change phones is usually less than two years. The influence is relatively small, while the large-size OLED panel used in TV has a large area and a long service life of ten years, so the impact is more obvious.

In contrast, microLED technology is considered to be more promising, because it has some advantages of OLED and has no screen burning problem. Therefore, it is considered to be a panel technology to replace OLED. The technology had been slow to develop and had little influence, but since Apple, the technology industry leader, acquired LuxVue Technology, which developed microLED technology in the early years, microLED technology has begun to attract widespread attention in the industry.

However, the research and development of microLED technology is very difficult. In short, the technology of microLED is to film, miniaturize and array the backlight of LED (light emitting diode). Its LED unit needs less than 100 microns. However, under the current technology, it is very difficult to achieve this goal, and the yield and cost are difficult to reach the economic level. Taiwan's enterprises in China propose to develop Mini LED technology first. The size of the LED unit is over 100 microns, which is relatively less difficult.

Taiwan's Panel Companies in China consider miniLED actually has its realistic considerations. At present, Samsung, a Korean company, occupies 90% of the market share in the small and medium-sized OLED panel market, while LGD occupies more than 90% of the market share in the large-sized OLED panel market. Later, China mainland rapidly promotes OLED panel technology by virtue of cost advantages. Taiwan's Panel Companies in China can hardly catch up with Korean companies in the research and development of OLED panel technology. They are not as expensive as those in mainland China. Therefore, they try to develop Mini LED panel technology to achieve corner overtaking.

MiniLED technology will bring changes to the panel industry

Mini LED technology is more suitable for large-scale display products such as TV. The larger LED units lead to the appearance of granularity in small-scale electronic products such as mobile phones. However, large-scale TV and other products will not have strong granularity because of the long viewing distance of users.

Although OLED TV has more than 50% market share in high-end TV market last year, there are some problems such as high cost and screen burning. Another reason restricting the popularity of OLED TV is production capacity. It is expected that the production capacity of OLED panel will double after LGD's 8.5 generation OLED panel production line is put into operation in Guangzhou next year. However, in 2017, OLED TV will occupy the whole world. Television market share is only about 1%, even if LGD increases OLED panel capacity substantially, it will still be difficult to replace TFT-LCD in the next few years. This led to the OLED TV's popularity in the TV market, which provided an opportunity for miniLED TV.

Because of these favorable factors, Taiwan's Panel Companies in China have chosen to develop mini-LED technology. In recent years, they have held frequent technical seminars, focusing on Taiwan's enterprises in China trying to speed up the commercialization of this technology, by accumulating technology and funds after gaining competitive advantage in the television market, they can further develop microLED technology. From a realistic point of view, this is indeed the right way.

However, Taiwanese media also said that although miniLED technology is still a long way from mass production, Taiwan's enterprises in China need to speed up the progress of the technology to achieve large-scale production, improve yield and reduce costs to achieve commercial level.

The Panel Companies in mainland China also recognize the advantages of microLED technology, such as Beijing Dongfang, China's largest panel company, which is actively promoting OLED panel technology (its first OLED panel production line was successfully put into operation at the end of last year. Recently, Huawei's flagship mobile phone Mat20 Pro has partially adopted its OLED panel and the second OLED panel. The production line is also under construction.) It is also preparing for the development of microLED technology. In the case of the development of miniLED technology in Taiwan, China, it is unknown whether Beijing Oriental will follow up the miniLED technology or directly develop the microLED technology.