Market updates - Page 11

Yole Developpement published an interesting article discussing the patent landscape of the MicroLED industry. As of today, almost 1,500 MicroLED patents were filed by 125 companies and organization. The overall corpus has an average of 3.2 years, which makes these patents quite new.

The initial micro-LED patents, filed at around 2000-2001, were mostly by a variety of research institutes, by large companies such as Sony and Sharp but also by startups such as Luxvue (acquired by Apple). The activity in this field is still led mostly by startups, and with the exception of Sony and Sharp, mature display makers are relative latecomers.

Digitimes posted an interesting research note, in which they state that micro-LED displays may find it hard to compete with LCD and OLED displays as the market is approaching saturation.

Micro-LEDs have several advantages over other displays - high brightness, quick response time and the ability to create flexible and transparent displays (this is also true for OLEDs). However a major advantage for Micro LEDs is that the aperture ratio is only 10%, which means that there is a lot of empty space in a micro-LED display.

Japan-based Yano Research Institute estimates that following Sony's launch of its CLEDIS display, the Micro-LED market will finally emerge this year. Yano sees the micro-LED market growing from $7 million in 2017 through $14 million in 2018 and $224 million by 2020.

The fast growth will continue, and the micro-LED market wil reach $4.5 billion by 2025 - that's a total growth of over 65,000% from 2017 to 2025.

Digitimes posted an interesting interview with Epistar's president, Jou Ming-Jiunn. Jou says that the most optimistic scenario is for micro-LED displays to enter production by the end of 2018, with real devices appearing in 2019. There are still challenges ahead though, and Epistar's customers have not yet committed to anything.

According to Jou, there are two main routes to the market for Micro-LED makers: VR/AR or wearable displays and large-area TV panels. It is not clear yet which will route will arrive first.

Market research company TrendForce says Micro LED displays still face several challenges. Commercialization of LED displays with small pitch sizes, which TrendForce calls "Micro LED-like" displays are expected by 2018.

TrendForce defines Micro LED displays as displays with LED size smaller than 100 microns. There are still several challenges ahead - with a major one being the the mass transfer of micron-size LEDs to a display backplane. Companies are now aiming to commercialize 150 micron displays as early as next year, and then will follow to develop processes to support small LED sizes.