Taiwan-based Unity Opto Technology announced plans to invest $1.9 billion NT (around $64 million USD) to setup six new production lines for mini-LEDs and micro-LEDs.
Unity Opto Technology, established in 1993, develops and markets a wide variety of LED products, including LED packages, LED back lighting for displays and automotive LED products.
Taiwan-based LED producer Epistar is in talks with China-based LED display maker Leyard Opto-Electronic to setup a Mini-LED and Micro-LED production site in Wuxi, China. The two companies (actually Leyard and Epistar's subsidiary Yenrich Technology) will setup a joint-venture with a budget of $142 million.
Leyard says that the plan is to form the joint venture six months after getting the final approval for the plan. This will enable the production to begin in the new fab in 2023. It is still not clear whether the new fab will produce mini and micro LED chips - or actual displays.
In early 2019 Rohinni announced a collaboration with China-based display maker BOE, and now the companies announced that they are launching the JV as a separate company called BOE Pixey, which will design and build micro-LED based LCD display backlights and direct-emission displays - focusing on large-area displays (32-inch and up).
BOE Pixel will also develop related sensors for large-format displays. BOE Pixey integrates Rohinni's mini-LED and micro-LED manufacturing process with BOE's display panel production experience and leadership. The company says that first products that utilize its displays will reach the market in the second half of 2020.
China-based display maker Konka launched tiled large micro-LED displays, under the APHAEA brand. These are modular displays (similar to Samsung's The Wall and Sony' Crystal LED displays) and Konka demonstrated several possible configurations - including 118" 4K and 236" 8K.
Konka already announced the prices of its new TVs - the 118" 4K one costs around $240,000 while the 236" 8K TV costs $1.25 million. For those that think that this is extremely expensive, Konka says that the cost is around 30% cheaper than a comparable Samsung The Wall TV (Samsung is not disclosing the prices of these tailor made 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.
Taiwan-based PMOLED display maker RiTDisplay announced that it plans to launch its first MicroLED displays in 2020. RiTDisplay aims to mass produce wearable displays and hopes for receive meaningful revenues already in 2020.
In May 2019 RiTDisplay announced a strategic partnership and share swap with MicroLED developer PlayNitride. In June 2019 it was reported that a US-based smartwatch brand will start a design process in Q3 2019 using a micro-LED display that was co-developed by RiTDisplay and PlayNitride. RiT was reportedly to start shipping samples in Q4 2019.
UK-based GaN-On-Si MicroLED microdisplay developer Plessey Semiconductor announced that it has entered into a partnership with microdisplay system developer Compound Photonics to co-develop a Full-HD (1920x1080) 0.26-inch microLED display solution. The two companies expect to start offering samples in mid-year 2020 (not clear if these will be monochrome or full-color).
For this display system, Plessey will bond its micro-LED array wafer on Compound Photonics' backplane silicon wafer. The display module itself will be based on Compound Photonicsâ NOVA digital drive architecture with MIPI input.
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.
Luumii, a joint-venture between Micro-LED developer Rohinni and Koja, announced that it has started to mass produce its micro-LED and mini-LED based notebook computer keyboard backlights and logo lighting solutions.
Luumii says that its solutions are more compact and offer a higher power efficiency compared to current solutions, and may also enhance product features and user experience as it offers colored lighting and animations. Luumii's current capacity is 34,000 units per month, and by the end of 2019 it will increase the capacity to 100,000 monthly units.
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.
