— An Interview with Ji Fengqiang, Operations Director
of Changchun Cedar Electronics Technology Co., Ltd.
With the maturation of Chip-on-Board (COB) display technology and continuous cost reductions, the penetration rate of COB is rapidly increasing, setting the stage for an imminent market boom. Changchun Cedar Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereafter “Cedar Electronics”) is one of the earliest companies to enter the COB display field, maintaining a leading position ever since. To date, it has launched a range of products utilizing COB technology, including Mini/Micro LED commercial display screens, televisions, and integrated solutions for smart education and conferencing. At this year’s Beijing Infocomm exhibition, Cedar introduced the world’s first full-color glass-based Micro LED display with a pixel pitch of 0.3mm, drawing significant attention from the industry. As a company at the forefront of COB technology, what are Cedar Electronics’ standout contributions in the COB display sector? How do they view the coexistence of COB and MIP technology pathways in the current market? And how will Cedar Electronics further deepen its footprint in the COB display market? To explore these questions, LED Display World interviewed Ji Fengqiang, the company’s Operations Director, to discuss Cedar’s journey in COB display.
Leading the New Era of COB Technology
According to Ji Fengqiang, Cedar Electronics has been a pioneer in the development and application of COB display technology since its inception. As early as 2007, Cedar launched the industry’s first integrated three-in-one COB display prototype, ushering the LED display sector into the COB era. In 2013, it applied for a patent for the “Wafer-Inverted Integrated LED Display Package Module,” completing the transition from positive COB to flip-chip COB. In 2017, Cedar led a major project under China’s 13th Five-Year National Key R&D Plan for the development and application demonstration of ultra-high-density, small-pitch LED displays, achieving pixel pitches below 1.0mm. By 2021, Cedar had introduced its Huanjing series, applying and commercializing its pixel multiplexing patent technology, thus initiating innovative applications for large-scale, green, ultra-high-definition LED COB direct-view displays across various scenarios. In 2024, Cedar launched the world’s smallest pixel pitch 0.3mm glass-based modular Micro LED color display, achieving ultra-high resolution and seamless splicing for large-format displays, effectively leading COB technology into the Micro LED era.
Behind these significant achievements is the relentless effort of talented teams. Ji emphasized that Cedar Electronics leverages the talent pool and technological resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, driving its development through independent innovation. The company pioneered flip-chip LED integrated packaging technology, achieving mass production and industrial application of core materials and components. Cedar has mastered the entire value chain of COB display, from integrated packaging, display driving, data calibration, optical design, and control systems to software systems, holding original core patents in all these areas. Its technologies are entirely independently developed and controlled, reaching international leading standards.
Cedar Electronics is also at the forefront of setting standards, actively promoting high-quality development across the industry. As the main drafter, Cedar developed the Chinese Optical and Optoelectronics Industry Association Group Standards for “General Technical Specifications for Indoor COB Small-Pitch LED Displays” and “Indoor COB LED Display Screens.” It also led the development of local standards, such as the “COB Small-Pitch LED Display Screen Huanjing Test Technical Specifications,” to ensure healthy and orderly development in the COB sector.
Cedar Electronics places a strong emphasis on understanding user needs. Through the application validation of over 3,000 classic COB display engineering projects globally, the company has gained deep insights into user demands, developing LED display products that meet these needs and driving collaborative development across the entire supply chain to build a COB display industrial ecosystem.
Commitment to COB Displays and Driving Industry Upgrades
Cedar Electronics remains firmly committed to its “green ultra-high-definition” product philosophy as its core development direction, covering a wide range of application scenarios—from high-end professional displays to conference and commercial displays, and home theater solutions. This comprehensive coverage extends from B2B to B2C markets, realizing dual innovation in both scenarios and products. Currently, Cedar’s COB products are mainly used in three key areas: professional displays, conference displays, and home displays, along with high-end custom solutions for special industry clients.
Ji Fengqiang highlighted that Cedar’s COB products offer multiple advantages, including energy efficiency, environmental protection, health benefits, true cool screens, and high reliability. The company has innovatively adopted low-power cool screen technology to achieve low-temperature rise, low power consumption, and uniform heat dissipation, maintaining the screen surface temperature within a comfortable range below body temperature for extended use, providing users with a comfortable near-screen experience.
Additionally, Cedar has optimized optical design to transform point light sources into surface light sources, ensuring high-brightness display effects while significantly reducing eye strain, effectively protecting users’ vision health. Cedar’s unique UBP extreme black surface ink treatment and seamless splicing technology achieve perfect uniformity in both black levels and overall screen consistency.
Cedar Electronics has taken the lead in several national projects, aligning its technology roadmap with China’s major strategic needs. It led the “Ultra-High-Density Small-Pitch LED Display Key Technology Development and Application Demonstration” project under the “13th Five-Year Plan,” successfully commercializing the project results, which were featured in the “13th Five-Year Plan Science and Technology Innovation Achievement Exhibition.” The project achieved an “overall internationally advanced” rating through scientific and technological evaluation, with core technologies reaching world-leading levels. Cedar’s independently developed technologies and products have been awarded the CIIF Industrial Expo Grand Prize and the SID International Display Society Gold Award. The company is also the main industrialization entity of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Hongguang Special Project, “Green Ultra-High-Definition Integrated Packaging LED Display Technology R&D and Industrialization,” with results featured in the “Science and Technology China” Pioneer Technology List. As a holder of comprehensive COB intellectual property since its founding, Cedar has consistently driven high-quality development through independent innovation, earning recognition as a national intellectual property advantage enterprise.
Pioneering the Path from Mini LED to Micro LED
From Mini LED to Micro LED, Cedar Electronics has always been at the forefront of COB technology. Cedar has invested comprehensively across multiple dimensions — from technology, process, and equipment to talent cultivation — striving for perfection in every detail of LED technology. Drawing on its deep expertise and strong capabilities in the LED field, Cedar continues to drive technological progress and industrial upgrading.
Cedar Electronics has made continuous breakthroughs in COB display technology and product iteration, deeply understanding and integrating user needs and feedback to achieve comprehensive innovation and upgrading in the green ultra-high-definition LED display field. Whether in command and control, business meetings, home entertainment, cinema, or commercial displays, Cedar has demonstrated strong product competitiveness in the green ultra-high-definition display market.
Deep Insights into Customer Needs and Building Core Competitiveness
In recent years, COB technology has rapidly expanded into more application industries and innovative scenarios, showing explosive growth due to its advantages in small pixel pitch and excellent performance. As a pioneer of COB, Cedar Electronics has led the evolution of COB products from a niche technology to one that flourishes across the entire industry, positioning Chinese companies as leaders on the global stage, particularly in high-end and smart displays, earning high praise and widespread recognition from global customers. Ji firmly believes that COB technology will further accelerate the application of Micro LED direct-view products, becoming a pillar supporting the continuous rise of the Micro LED industry.
Ji pointed out that, given the competitive landscape, more manufacturers will likely attempt to enter the COB field in the future, but only those combining technology, products, branding, cost, and strategy will succeed in the market. Cedar Electronics consistently monitors market dynamics and customer needs, actively promoting technological innovation and cost optimization. While ensuring product performance and quality, it effectively reduces costs, enhancing competitiveness. Additionally, the company has strengthened marketing efforts, actively expanding global sales channels and exploring new collaboration models to continuously enhance brand influence, thereby further consolidating its market position and laying a solid foundation for sustained, stable growth.
COB as a Pathway to Micro LED and New Opportunities for Outdoor Displays
Discussing the future of COB and MIP, Ji offered his insights. He noted that MIP currently divides into packaging-level and chip-level categories: the former, represented by companies like JingTai and Lijing, remains an extension of SMT processes, while the latter, led by international brands like Seoul Semiconductor and Samsung, represents chip-level MIP. The difference between packaging-level MIP and COB is fundamentally a distinction between SMT and COB packaging processes, with COB holding absolute advantages in reliability and stability. Moreover, without the LED cup packaging process, COB directly mounts chips on the board, making it significantly less costly than packaging-level MIP at the same scale. The main battlefield for packaging-level MIP remains the Mini LED sector, where products primarily cater to commercial displays, XR filming, and consumer applications, unsuitable for professional applications in government and healthcare sectors. With its pitch limitations, it cannot fully enter the Micro LED space. Therefore, packaging-level MIP is merely an extension of existing capabilities and industry cycles, not representing the future. Conversely, chip-level MIP fundamentally involves rearranging RGB chips, aligning with COB’s future technical pathway, but high costs and inadequate mass production capabilities pose significant challenges for short-term scalability. Until industry technology, manufacturing costs, and production equipment fully mature, MIP and COB will coexist in the Micro LED space until the market and users decide the final direction. COB will be the mainstream technology for Mini LED and a necessary pathway to Micro LED.
COB displays, compared to traditional displays, offer notable advantages in reliability, protection, brightness, contrast, and color reproduction. Moving from indoor to outdoor applications signifies a major upgrade in visual experience, meeting higher image quality and product standards for the outdoor display market. This transformation aligns with the growing demand for high-quality outdoor displays.
Ji also mentioned that outdoor environments are complex and variable, requiring high durability and protection from displays. Therefore, COB displays need superior protection to ensure stable operation in harsh outdoor environments. Outdoor displays typically need higher brightness to accommodate long-distance viewing and intense light exposure, which necessitates achieving higher brightness with low power consumption to ensure display quality while reducing overall operating costs. Displays must also offer high reliability and easy installation and maintenance—minimizing long-term failure rates and simplifying installation and maintenance to lower costs. System operation capability is another crucial factor, ensuring longer transmission distances and more stable signals. Furthermore, to achieve successful outdoor applications, COB displays will need breakthroughs in UV technology, materials, and production processes. With ongoing advancements in COB technology, there is a strong possibility that the outdoor application market will open up for COB displays in addition to traditional indoor applications.
Strategic Vision and Long-Term Development
For Cedar Electronics, market competitiveness and product quality assurance are always rooted in a foundation of scientific research and innovation. Cedar remains steadfast in investing in research and development, gradually building a business model centered around “COB + pixel multiplexing technology + process optimization + fully automated intelligent production.” This approach optimizes production costs and ensures full product coverage while focusing on the long-term development of technology R&D and product quality.
Since 2023, the continuous decline in COB LED prices has been a double-edged sword for the industry. On the positive side, lower prices have driven the adoption and application expansion of COB technology, allowing more consumers and enterprises to access and utilize this cutting-edge technology, thus increasing COB’s market share. However, viewed from another perspective, continued price drops could lead some companies to excessively cut costs in pursuit of profit, potentially causing quality issues and damaging the industry’s reputation. Therefore, Cedar Electronics calls on its peers to maintain a rational approach to development and return to a model of healthy competition. We should collectively strive to improve product quality and technological standards, winning the market with solid technological strength. Only by doing so can we provide consumers with higher-quality products and ensure the sustainable, orderly development of the industry.
The future of COB technology remains robust. With ongoing advancements in packaging technology and steady cost reductions, the competitiveness of COB displays in the market will continue to grow. With its high resolution, brightness, contrast, reliability, and seamless splicing technology, COB displays will better meet the increasing demand for 4K/8K ultra-high-definition large-scale displays.
Moreover, COB technology will continuously integrate innovative elements, enhancing intelligence and offering users more convenient and personalized experiences. High-end customization services will also become a key development direction for COB technology, catering to specific needs in different industries and scenarios. This means that COB technology will become more adaptable and versatile across a broader range of applications.
Looking ahead, Cedar Electronics remains at the forefront of scientific research, actively contributing to developing the green ultra-high-definition industrial ecosystem. With energy-saving, eye-friendly, low-power consumption, and ultra-high-definition display products, Cedar is also committed to exploring the development and application of new display technologies, including Micro LED, glass-based displays, and glasses-free 3D. Ji concluded, “Only by respecting market demand can we meet the broadening applications and value creation of new scenarios. Only by continuously optimizing product performance and enhancing user experience can we truly earn users’ long-term trust and deep market recognition.”
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