Introduction: In the small-pitch LED display industry in 2021, new technologies, new applications, new opportunities, and new challenges coexist, making people look forward to the development trend of the industry in 2022 and beyond. This article provides a rough forecast for the development trend of the small-pitch LED industry in 2022 for reference.
Home audio-visual market wars are on the verge
After more than ten years of development, small-pitch LED displays have gained a firm foothold in the field of professional engineering. In order to explore new development space, the application market, including the household field, has become a hot spot for LED displays in recent years.
Multinational display giants including Sony, Samsung, LG, etc. have all carried out active explorations on Micro LED TVs. As far as China is concerned, Leyard launched a large-size home Micro LED TV under the Planar brand as early as 2019. In September 2021, Lehman Optoelectronics released a 4K 138-inch Micro LED private giant screen theater, and it went on sale through JD.com channels. Konka released the Smart Wall 4K 118-inch, 8K 236-inch version in 2019. Similar actions include Skyworth, BOE and so on.
It is not difficult to see that at the node of Micro LED TV, traditional TV brands, multinational display giants, and LED screen companies have already embarked on their journey. It is not only the focus of the brand, but also the brand new competition pattern of projection, LCD TV, and Micro LED TV in the home audio-visual market, especially the living room audio-visual market. In particular, the addition of Micro LED TVs is likely to bring about disruptive changes to the industry.
For projection, although it has significant advantages in realizing large-size images at low cost, its operation is more complicated than flat-panel display devices, and it has relatively higher requirements for ambient light. However, mainstream LCD TVs have difficult price and transportation problems in the field of products above 100 inches. However, with the gradual development of the content terminal towards 4K and 8K ultra-high definition, the size of TVs is also increasing year by year. This has brought about a gap in the demand for super-large flat-panel displays in the home audio-visual market, and this is precisely the area where LED TVs excel.
In fact, for small-pitch LED display technology, the Pathfinder home market is the result of technological development, and it is also the need for enterprise development. As we all know, the traditional applications of small-pitch LEDs are mainly concentrated in the field of professional engineering display. However, the tens of billions of volume in this market cannot bear the development needs of MLED technology. At this time, the home audio-visual market with a net worth of hundreds of billions is naturally Very good export.
Therefore, from the analysis of the dominant side, LED TVs are likely to find a breakthrough in the large-size household market above 100 inches; next, after the market awareness and scale are increased, with the decline in prices, they will gradually occupy the mid-range size. A certain amount; in the long run, after MLED is widely used in mobile phones, tablets, VR headsets and other devices, it is also expected to be applied on small-size TVs.
5G+8K, the ultra-high-definition industry accelerates the landing
From the professional market to the home market and the commercial market, Ultra HD is accelerating its penetration and has become a consensus in the industry. Especially with the blessing of 5G and other technologies, this trend is becoming more and more obvious.
Let's look at the TV field first. At the 2021 New Display Industry Innovation and Development Forum held in Mianyang on September 10, 2021, Zhao Jun, Chief Operating Officer of TCL China Star, delivered a keynote speech on "Entering the 8K New Era", stating: "Traditional 65-inch, 75-inch super large size The graininess of 4K TVs is severe, and resolution upgrades have become necessary. This demand has accelerated the development of 8K ultra-high-definition display technology."
Let's look at the big screen again. In recent years, CCTV has adopted 5G+8K technology in the broadcast of major evenings and events, and this has led to popular applications including small-pitch LEDs and fine-pitch LED displays. For example: On May 19th, AET Altai’s first 8K 0.7 full-flip COB display screen was stationed in China Central Radio and Television Headquarters, welcoming the visit and inspection of leaders from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and becoming a CCTV “5G+4K/8K+AI media” One of the highlights of "Innovative Application Promotion Week".
On October 21, the six departments of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Propaganda of the Central Committee, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the State Administration of Radio and Television, and China Central Radio and Television jointly issued a notice, deciding on the period from October 2021 to 2023. During the month, launch the "Hundred Cities and Thousands of Screens" ultra-high-definition video promotion campaign with the theme of "Lighting up a Hundreds of Cities and Thousands of Screens, Colorful and Ultra-Clear Vision".
However, industry insiders also pointed out that although on the hardware side, the display industry is ready to welcome the ultra-high-definition era, some of these problems need to be resolved if the entire industry chain is to be commercialized, such as insufficient content. Business model innovation and so on. Driven by policies such as "Hundred Cities and One Thousand Screens", the ultra-high-definition industry will accelerate its entry into the market and application landing. It is foreseeable that in the future, areas such as ultra-high-definition equipment, content production, and service ecological chain will become a hot spot for innovation.
New air outlet? Enterprises accelerate their approach to the Internet of Things
The concept of the Internet of Things characterized by the Internet of Everything is not new in the field of home appliances. However, the announcement by display manufacturers to transform the Internet of Things enterprise is definitely a big news in the industry in recent years.
During the InfoComm China 2021 held in Beijing in July 2021, Unilumin Technology was the first in the industry to launch a "software-defined large screen", declaring that Unilumin has fully entered the era of smart display of the Internet of Things. At the same time, the company changed the introduction to "Internet of Things Enterprise", which shows its determination to transform the Internet of Things.
Coincidentally, in October, BOE announced a comprehensive upgrade of its brand positioning and announced a new brand mission, brand principles and brand commitments. The brand upgrade is based on the company's comprehensive transformation to the Internet of Things strategic background, inherits the core values of the original brand, and takes "inheritance, innovation and development" as the concept, and establishes "changing life with heart" as the company's brand mission for future development. The brand principle of "leading technology, product excellence, integration and symbiosis, people-oriented" and the new brand promise have realized a profound change and comprehensive renewal of the brand concept, presenting people with a more warm touch, more humanistic care, and more ideal feelings. The high-tech corporate image of BOE also marks BOE’s entry into a new stage of development in the transformation of the Internet of Things.
Why are traditional manufacturing companies keen on the Internet of Things? The industry believes that digitalization is the direction of the development of the times, and the Internet of Things era of the Internet of Everything is bound to and coming soon, and the display screen as an important human-computer interaction medium will also usher in new changes. First, the display screen will become ubiquitous; secondly, the display will be more intelligent.
Display will be ubiquitous, which means that many display technologies will be in communion. For example, the future of the development of Micro LED technology is likely to be as small as smart watches and VR headsets, as large as home TVs and movie theater screens, achieving "all-you-can-eat". Then, in the era of the Internet of Things, new changes will take place in the brand landscape, and in the face of this upcoming trend, whoever can start first will have the upper hand.
If 2021 is still the year of enlightenment for the transformation of the Internet of Things for screen companies, then it is conceivable that more companies and more businesses will be organically integrated with the Internet of Things and related technologies in the future, thus giving birth to new products. , A new format.
In the era of micro-pitch, industry concentration is further enhanced
Every technological iteration will inevitably trigger a reshuffle of the industry, bringing about changes in product form, business model, and even brand structure. With the LED display industry gradually entering the P0.X micro-pitch era, this kind of industry pattern change is also unavoidable, and the most noteworthy thing is the further increase in industry concentration.
After more than ten years of development, today’s small-pitch LED display industry has entered a relatively mature stage of development, and the industry’s entry barriers have gradually decreased. Attracted by the huge market capacity, a large number of investors have poured in, making current enterprises engaged The number is quite large, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. However, on the one hand, facing various challenges such as changes in the global financial environment, sudden public health incidents, and rising prices of upstream raw materials, these companies, which are already profitable, will have a harder life. On the other hand, in this generation of micro-pitch, which is more dependent on technological leadership, companies whose businesses are mainly concentrated at the end of the industry chain face greater risks of shuffling.
The leading companies that entered the market earlier have deep accumulation in capital, technology, talents, channels, sales, and projects. In the face of the micro-pitch era, not only is it more powerful to participate in the upstream leading technology research and development, but also has a stronger ability to bear risks in business operations. Especially in the micro-pitch era dominated by technological leadership, users will pay more attention to brand endorsements, which will also accelerate the concentration of market advantage resources to leading companies to a certain extent.
Especially with the rapid development of Mini/Micro LED technology, this trend will become more prominent. Since this type of cutting-edge R&D has very high requirements for talents and capital, relatively weak small and medium-sized enterprises are likely to be far behind the leading companies in technological innovation. At the same time, taking into account the integrity of the industrial chain layout of the leading enterprises, it has more advantages on the manufacturing side, so it will further widen the gap with SMEs in terms of technology transformation, cost control, and product delivery.
At present, the prospect of micro-pitch display has attracted the vigorous layout of many brands, and many of them are "latecomers" in the LED industry. While confirming the promising market prospects, it also further shows that in the era of micro-pitch display, brand competition will Even more fierce, shuffling is inevitable.
In the era of micro-pitch, user choices will be concentrated on top brands with more brand influence and strength, and the supply of market advantage resources will also be concentrated on top brands with more bulk purchasing capabilities, which will further enlarge the head. The gap in bargaining power between enterprises and SMEs. All this will further increase the market share and voice of leading companies, and further increase market concentration.
The concept of "meta universe" may trigger new opportunities
Recently, the term "meta universe" has aroused widespread attention in the scientific and technological circles, and many technology giants, including Tencent and Bytedance, have participated in investment. Facebook even changed its name to Meta for the meta-universe concept, which shows how much the bigwigs in the technology industry attach importance to this matter.
IDC data shows that global VR headset shipments in the first quarter of 2021 increased by 52.4% year-on-year. It is estimated that global VR headset shipments are expected to achieve an average annual growth rate of 41.4% from 2021 to 2025. The market size of my country's VR industry reached 41.35 billion yuan in 2020 and is expected to reach 105.16 billion yuan in 2023, which undoubtedly means another 100 billion-level market.
At present, the meta-universe concept, which seems to be far away, is actually inextricably linked with LEDs. The so-called meta universe is actually an immersive virtual world in essence, which cannot be separated from the support of AR, VR and other visual equipment. Because this virtual world has the characteristics of individualization and interaction, it is more likely that in the future, digital services, art, games, and even the sale of goods will be absorbed and new business models will be created. In a broad sense, the concept of Metaverse covers six front-end technology categories, including Internet of Things technology, artificial intelligence, interactive technology, network and computing technology, electronic games, blockchain and so on.
In the world of meta universe, there are also opportunities for LED screens. First of all, in terms of hardware equipment, the VR/AR device at the entrance of Meta Universe is for close-eye viewing, which has extremely high requirements for indicators such as resolution and refresh rate. At present, technical routes including OLED, quantum dot liquid crystal, etc. are all eyeing this market, but the industry generally believes that Micro LED is the ultimate player in this application, which seems to mean that LED screen companies have already been on the application side. Seizing the opportunity, Liantronics Optoelectronics, Unilumin, Absen and other companies have matured cases. In the future, it is more likely to find opportunities in the fields of terminal equipment, front-end materials, and panel supply.
On the other hand, with the deep penetration of technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, the traditional service sector will develop in the direction of digitization, intelligence, and even virtualization, which will inevitably be inseparable from the human-computer interaction interface, that is, the application of display screens. . In fact, in recent years, LED screen companies have carried out active explorations and attempts in the fields of AR, VR, and XR. For example, LED background screens participate in filming film and television works, act as virtual background screens in studios, and serve as virtual design workshops for the development of factory components. , Acting as a virtual immersive experience carrier for museums and tourist attractions, used for virtual scene display teaching training, etc.
Regarding the meta universe, the industry is still unable to give a clear definition, and there are voices of doubt about its prospects. However, with the maturity and application of Micro LED technology, it is believed that it will have more connections with the digital and virtual world. Paying close attention to the dynamics of this industry may be able to bring new business opportunities.
Post time: Jan-05-2022