Mini/Micro LED Industry in 2024: A Tale of Contrasting Fortunes Amidst Massive Investment （1）
In 2024, the Mini/Micro LED application sector has witnessed an investment of nearly 100 billion yuan, marking a significant milestone in its development journey. However, the industry finds itself at a rather delicate juncture, with technological advancements and innovations surging on one hand, while a conspicuous mismatch between market demand and supply looms large on the other.
Mini LED has been on a remarkable growth trajectory. In the realm of backlight TVs, it has experienced explosive expansion. Data from JD.com during the 2024 Double Eleven shopping spree in China reveals that the transaction volume of Mini LED TVs soared more than 12 times year-on-year. This technology has now overtaken OLED TVs to claim the top spot in the high-end color TV market in terms of sales volume. Conservatively estimated, the global shipments of Mini LED TVs are expected to surge by 65% in 2024, reaching a staggering 6.75 million units.
On the direct display front, Mini LED has also been making significant inroads. Thanks to the structural price cuts in COB packaging that began in 2023, its market share in the small-pitch LED segment has ballooned. The P1.5 product, leveraging COB-Mini LED technology, has emerged as a hot-selling item, especially in the international market where the price reduction has translated into a notable market expansion effect, mirroring the domestic success story of 2023. The synergy among upstream and downstream resources in the Mini LED value chain has been intensifying, which bodes well for further cost reduction and continued market enlargement.
In stark contrast, Micro LED has faced some headwinds. Apple's suspension of the development of its Micro LED direct-display smartwatch has sent ripples through the industry, causing uncertainties in the product lines of LGD and Osram. Osram's nearly $1 billion Micro LED factory in Malaysia is at risk of never commencing production. Domestically, projects like Sanan Optoelectronics' Mini/Micro LED chip industrialization project in Hubei and Jucan Optoelectronics' Mini/Micro LED chip R&D and manufacturing expansion project in Suqian have postponed their production schedules from 2024 to 2026.
Nevertheless, there are also silver linings. BOE and Hisense have been accelerating their Micro LED chip and display projects. BOE Huacan's Micro LED wafer manufacturing and packaging test base project went into operation in November 2024. On August 30, 2024, Hisense Qianzhao's semiconductor base project in Jiangxi also held a commencement ceremony. With a total investment of 1 billion yuan, the base has introduced 60 sets of MOCVD and supporting equipment, making use of the existing factory buildings and land resources in Nanchang.
The divergent progress can be attributed to the varying pressures Micro LED faces across different product categories. In small and medium-sized displays such as smartwatches, the extremely challenging mass transfer process has hampered its market penetration. Conversely, in the large direct-display market, the MIP technology has flung open the doors to rapid growth. Additionally, the consumption of upstream resources differs among enterprises. For emerging closed-loop ecosystems like BOE and Hisense, chip production capacity remains insufficient, while for pure upstream players like Sanan, the upgraded capacity to Micro LED levels has already led to a significant boost in pixel-based production capacity, thus reducing the urgency to build new production lines.
Overall, the Mini/Micro LED industry in 2024 presents a picture of "extremes coexisting," with highly mature, nearly mature, and temporarily stalled products all vying for space. This complex landscape has accentuated the industry's need for a strategic acumen to precisely target segmented markets.
