During AUO's recent investor conference call, the company updated on its microLED project and made some interesting comments. First of all, AUO says that it has started to ship wearable microLED display panels at the end of 2024 (that's in line with AUO's previous announcement).
As far as we know, AUO is working with a Swiss luxury watch producer (like Tag Hauer) that will announce its microLED smartwatch soon. AUO says that it expects to expand its wearable microLED production soon.
AUO also says that it is "developing various plans for the mass production of micro LED" in priority markets. The main markets that AUO targets are the automotive, wearable, TV, and the Vertically-integrated displays market. For the automotive segment, AUO is working with several customers on projects, but it acknowledges that it will take 2-3 years to be able to achieve commercial viability.
AUO says that some people have began to doubt the future of the microLED industry following Apple's decision to cancel its project. But AUO says that the fact that Apple decided decided to stop its R&D effort does not imply that it is giving up on the microLED technology altogether. AUO has been progressing rapidly with its customers and actually believes that "the technology is already mature". AUO has plans to rapidly reduce production costs, and also to improve the quality of its microLED screens. In fact the company believes that it is leading the industry
Towards the end of 2023, AUO announced its plans to invest further in its microLED technologies, and re-iterated its plans to mass produce microLED smartwatch displays by the end of 2023 and good to know that production actually started. AUO also announce plans to introduce automotive and TV displays. You can read more about AUO's microLED wearable display project here. In November 2023, AUO announced an agreement with PlayNitride, to build a $21.5 million 6-inch microLED production line at AUO's Longtan factory. The company is highly engaged with microLEDs, but its announced production is still at low volumes.
In early 2024, Lenovo demonstrated a laptop with a transparent AUO microLED display. The company has also demonstrated larger transparent microLEDs.
