SID DisplayWeek 2023 - first microLED impressions

Display Week 2023, the industry's premier event, is now over, and it was a great week. We had dozens of meetings and saw many next-generation display technologies. As we go over all materials, we will upload new stories to detail the displays on show.

During the conference, we also hosted the first annual MicroLED Industry Association meeting, and were happy to see almost 40 people attending the meeting, and staying for several hours - discussing their latest technologies and exchanging information and news.

Here are our key takeaways from this show:

• The display industry is in somewhat of a slump, this is clearly visible and is also on everybody's mind. We're not worried, though, there are always ups and down, but early stage companies should be aware that it may take longer to reach the market as display makers seem a bit hesitant to introduce new technologies.
• All large display makers are showing their latest displays in beautiful booths. There's a lot of focus on existing technologies, showing the latest commercial displays, and foldable and rollable demonstrations that were on show years ago. To be fair, these technologies are maturing and are either already commercial or closer to be introduced.
• Almost all next-generation technologies at the show are either OLED displays, or Micro-LEDs. In fact there's a lot of emphasis on microLED displays, which almost everyone agrees represent the future of the display industry. It is still years before commercialization can begin for most display segments, but companies realize now is the time to invest in this segment and provide solutions and technologies.
• AR is another hot topic, and there were many demonstrations of AR technologies, display engines and optics. Everybody is waiting to see Apple's announcement next month, and hoping that it will give a boost to this market segment
• For the OLED industry, the word of the day is efficiency, and maybe also brightness (which are usually the same, really, for OLEDs). Most of the latest technologies revolve around new technologies that reduce the power consumption of OLED displays, which is great. Companies are also showing new technologies to improve the ability to embed sensors behind or within OLED displays.
• One of our favorite technologies is ePaper, and E Ink as always is displaying its beautiful displays, with real advances in the color fidelity of its displays. The refresh rate is still very slow, but if the application is right, this is an excellent display technologies and it is great that E Ink is introducing it successfully to new segments
• Quantum Dots are also prominent, as these nanomaterials are widely used in the industry, and adoption of QDs is likely to increase. In fact we have seen several impressive demonstrations of microLED displays based on blue (or UV) LEDs with QD color conversion
• As always, some companies prefer to show their demonstrations in private meetings only. This is a shame, as some of the more impressive displays that we have seen have been in private meetings that we cannot disclose here. 

That's it for now. We will soon share some of the technologies in more details, and the new announcements made during the week. Stay tuned!