Financial - Page 9

China-based display maker Konka announced it is building a micro-LED research and development center in Chongqing, China. Total investment in this initiative is around $365 million, out of which Konka will invest $215 million (the rest is contributed by the local government)

These funds will be used to purchase micro-LED production equipment, R&D and also to increase the production of support the sale of Micro-LED related products. Konka hopes that this investment will propel it to leadership in the microLED industry. Konka believes that Micro-LED will become the leading technology for ultra-high quality consumer TVs.

The local government of China's Guangzhou province announced that it now offers large subsidies (up to $285 million USD per company) to encourage emerging technology production in the province.

The government announced a list of emerging display technologies - which include OLEDs, quantum dot displays, e-paper displays, graphene enhanced display technologies - and microLED displays.

According to ETNews, Samsung Electronics is considering to start investing in a microLED TV production facility and equipment in the first half of 2020. ETNews says that Samsung did not yet decide on the investment amount or its production output goals - but microLED equipment makers are hoping for Samsung's orders.

If Samsung will indeed start to invest in microLED production in earnest, this will quite a surprise as microLED production costs are still very high and it is unlikely that prices will drop enough in the near future to appeal to the consumer market. There are also technical challenges yet to overcome.

Market analysts at Yole Developpement say that microLED shipments will reach over 125 million panels by 2027. In their aggressive scenario, shipments will reach almost 450 million.

Yole says that microLED technologies are advancing rapidly - and on all fronts, but there are still many challenges to overcome before mass production arrives. MicroLED makes a strong case for the AR, smartwatch and automotive market. For the smartphones and TV markets it is less clear whether MicroLEDs could succeed.

A few months ago we reported that Taiwan-based Foxconn is increasing its Micro-LED involvement, but now a new report from Taiwan says that the company canceled its microLED R&D project as it aims to improve its profitability.

Foxconn had an internal team that aimed to develop microLED displays for smartwatches and smartphones. Foxconn stopped the funding, and the team failed to find outside financing and so had to disband.

In July 2019 Taiwan-based microLED developer PlayNitride raised $50 million to start trial production of microLED displays. The company now says it seeks to raise over $100 million more as it will require large funds to initiate mass production.

PlayNitride is considering several production models - from constructing its own production lines, through a joint-venture with strategic partners to the licensing of its technology. The main goal of the company is to start production as soon as possible. The company hopes mass production can begin by the end of 2020.

iBeam Materials announced that it has received an investment from Samsung Ventures. iBeam developed a technology that can be used to produce LED chips on large-area flexible foils.

iBeam Materials, founded in 2011 in the US, is still at an early stage but this technology could enable the production of micro-LED devices directly on large-area flexible substrates without the use of a transfer (pick-and-place) process.

High-precision 3D sensing developer CyberOptics Corporation announced that it has received a $1.3 million order for its Multi-Reflection Suppression (MRS)-enabled SQ3000 Multi-Function systems for Automated Optical Inspection (AOI), Solder Paste Inspection (SPI) and Coordinate Measurements (CMM).

CyberOptics says that the systems, which will ship in Q2 2020, will be used for the scale-up of Micro LED device production.

Digitimes reports that PlayNitride raised $50 million and is ready to start trial production of micro-LED chips by the end of August 2019. PlayNitride will increase its headcount by 100 employees.

PlayNitride told Digitimes that it achieved a yield rate of 99.9% in its LED transfer (pick-and-place) process. Using mass repair technologies, the company is certain it can achieve commercial viability of its process. The company's mass transfer speed is 10,000 chips per second. This means that for a Full-HD (1920x1080) display it will take just over 10 minutes to transfer the LED chips. A 4K display will take just over 40 minutes.

Taiwan-based PMOLED display maker RiT Display announced a strategic partnership and share swap with MicroLED developer PlayNitride. RiTDisplay will have access to PlayNitride's technology and will be able to produce and sell micro-LED panels.

According to the Taipei times, RiTDisplay aims to produce small displays for wearable applications. The article says the display size will be around 3-inch, which actually sounds rather large for wearables.