But Mini LED is bound to directly face competition from OLED, both in cell phone or TV consumer electronics products, consumers have gradually identified equipped with OLED panel is equivalent to high-end products, coupled with OLED production stability, and even all future capacity advantage, so the market also continued to observe exactly Mini LED should be aimed at those applications.
Mini LED and OLED their technical superiority
OLED has the inherent advantages of self-luminous characteristics such as high color saturation (NTSC over 100%), high contrast (1,000,000:1) and fast response time (microseconds), plus flexible imagination space, let Manufacturers have greater flexibility in thickness or design. Mini LED is based on the current LCD display architecture, the chip size is reduced to 100 ~ 200 microns, through the matrix arrangement in the backlight module filled with LEDs, the same Emphasizes high contrast and boasts ultra-high brightness of over 1000nits. In addition, HDR through partition dimming is also one of the advantages of Mini LED.
Due to technical issues such as cost and power consumption, it is difficult for the Mini LED to enter the mobile phone market.
However, Mini LED products use a very large number of LEDs. Take a 5.5-inch FHD screen as an example. The number of LEDs used is as high as 2,000 to 10,000. A small number of LEDs will require a longer optical distance, which will increase the overall thickness of the device. ; Although a large number of LED can shorten the optical distance required by the backlight and the uniformity is better, it will lead to heat dissipation problems and make the cost increase significantly.
Taking a 5.5-inch hard OLED panel as an example, the panel cost will probably be about 17-18 dollars; if the same size, the same resolution is replaced with a Mini LED backlight, the panel cost will be about 35-40 dollars, close to the past OLED panel The “sale price”. As OLED production capacity is no longer tight, there are price competition pressures from the LTPS panel, OLED smart phone panel offer is still relatively weak in the long term. Therefore, Mini LED into the mobile phone market is still the key See when its cost can approach OLED.
Large-size TV market, Mini LED or have the opportunity to compete with OLED
In view of the television situation, due to the fact that the OLED printing and coloring technology is not yet mature, the material utilization rate of the current evaporation method is actually only 20 to 30%. If full-color evaporation is used on TV, it will face production yield. As well as the problem of low material utilization rate, TVs are basically based on WOLEDs, ie, yellow/green and blue light emitting layers are mixed into white light, and they are combined with color filters to achieve full colorization. This architecture is There are still advantages in comparison and thickness, but if you look at the performance of color saturation, using the backlight of Mini LED with QD film will have the same level as WOLED.
Taking the 65-inch UHD production cost as an example, the production cost will probably fall to US$950-1,000; and the 65-inch UHD with Mini LED backlighting will be estimated using 30,000-40,000 LEDs, and the production cost will be about 900-1,000 US dollars. At present, power consumption is not a television priority issue. Plus, cost is not too different from that of OLED. Mini LED has an opportunity. Recently, first-tier brands like Samsung Electronics and LGE have demonstrated or announced that they will have Launch plans for a large Mini LED TV or commercial display.
Cost is not a priority, Mini LED fights niche market
When the cost is not a priority, the opportunity for the device to import the Mini LED is much greater. From the 10.1-inch car display released at the CES at the beginning of the year, to the 27-inch LCD monitor and 15.6-inch display displayed by AUO recently. Notebook, 2 inch VR and other related devices, can be seen Mini LED technology in the product unit price is relatively high niche market has its own space to play.
As IT products inevitably need to implement word processing, the problem of afterimages caused by long static images has caused OLED to suffer a lot. In 2016, Samsung's OLED production capacity is mostly given priority to smart phone panels, and it also takes priority. Missed the opportunity to enter the IT market. In recent years, with the expansion of the e-sports market, the output value has been rising year by year. IT brands are also eager for the introduction of gross profit and e-sports products with high added value. In addition, recently, PC monitors have also been With the HDR standard, Mini LED's powerful divisional dimming function has the opportunity to bring HDR to full play. Therefore, high-end IT products will be the market where a few Mini LEDs have the opportunity to compete with OLEDs on the same starting line.