As of 2025, the future of television display technologies is filled with uncertainty. Looking back at 2024, the landscape of LCD panels dominated the low, mid, and high-end markets, while OLED panels and Micro LED still seek breakthroughs in the high-end market. Both technologies face the challenge of high costs, especially in large-screen applications. However, OLED panels have successfully penetrated the mid and small-size markets over the years, while Micro LED primarily sees commercial acceleration in the micro-display field.
I. OLED: Brightness Continues to Improve, but Cost Remains a Bottleneck
WOLED and QD-OLED are the leading technologies for large-size OLED television panels, with LG and Samsung taking the lead. WOLED uses white OLEDs to generate RGB colors through a filter, with recent innovations from LG Display (LGD) improving brightness and color gamut. However, the overall color performance remains relatively weak, and full-screen brightness is still low. On the other hand, QD-OLED enhances color purity and brightness through quantum dot technology, but it struggles with poor resistance to ambient light interference and high production costs.
To address the low full-screen brightness and high costs of WOLED, LGD has made significant advances with its 4-layer stacked WOLED technology, announced for mass production. This technology improves brightness by 33%, achieving a peak brightness of 4000 nits, and increases color brightness by 40%, reaching 2100 nits. Additionally, LGD’s new 4-layer stack eliminates the need for costly micro-lens array technology, potentially lowering OLED panel prices and accelerating the adoption of OLED televisions.
Samsung is also working to improve the brightness of OLED panels while reducing costs. QD-OLED, introduced by Samsung, also utilizes a 4-layer stack structure. Unlike LGD’s red-blue-green-blue arrangement, Samsung’s structure is blue-blue-green-blue. Samsung aims to release a new generation of QD-OLED panels in 2025, with brightness expected to exceed 3600 nits, reaching 4000 nits by 2026. This new process eliminates separate color filters and quantum dot substrates, instead printing quantum dots directly on the packaging layer to simplify the structure.
A major milestone in the OLED industry in 2024 was TCL CSOT’s mass production of printed OLED panels. At the TCL CSOT Global Display Ecosystem Conference in November 2024, the company announced that its printed OLED panels entered mass production at its new line in Wuhan, with an initial monthly capacity of 20,000 21.6-inch 4K medical display panels. Despite this achievement, TCL CSOT’s panels are still focused on mid and small-size displays and cannot yet challenge the dominance of LGD and Samsung in the large-size market.
In large-size OLED panels, limited competition among suppliers hinders cost reduction and significant development. For instance, a 75-inch OLED TV currently costs around ¥18,000, while a similarly sized Mini LED TV is priced at around ¥5,000, clearly highlighting the competitive advantages of Mini LED over OLED. This explains why OLED televisions have maintained a small market share despite years of development, while Mini LED televisions are expected to capture more than 20% of the market share in 2025.
While OLED panels face challenges in the large-size sector, they have already gained significant traction in the mid and small-size markets, with increasing market penetration. The key to achieving further success in the television sector lies in overcoming supplier oligopolies and high costs.
II. Micro LED: Commercialization in the Micro-Display Field Set to Accelerate
Micro LED technology, which integrates the benefits of both LCD and OLED, is touted as the next-generation display technology. It offers excellent picture quality, low power consumption, and long lifespan, making it a promising innovation.
At CES 2025, Micro LED products made frequent appearances. A range of Micro LED products, including televisions, automotive displays, AR glasses, smartwatches, and even beauty mirrors and smart mirrors, were showcased by companies such as Hisense, Samsung, AUO, Tianma, RayNeo, Innolux, VueReal, Vuzix, SiTan Tech, Goertek, and Aledia. This collective exhibition by the industry’s upstream and downstream participants demonstrates the high level of enthusiasm for innovation in this field.
Micro LED manufacturing can be divided into two main approaches: mass transfer and single-chip integration. Mass transfer involves separating microchips from the source substrate and transferring them in bulk to corresponding pixel electrodes on the display substrate, suitable for displays of different sizes and materials. Single-chip integration, on the other hand, integrates chips from the source substrate into the driver backplane through bonding.
“Both technologies have their strengths and weaknesses, but neither has resolved the challenges of high manufacturing costs and difficulty in production,” said an industry expert. “Mass transfer requires extremely high yields, with chip transfer errors not exceeding ±1.5μm, which traditional methods cannot achieve, making it a major bottleneck. Single-chip integration bypasses this but is currently limited to small sizes and single-color displays, primarily used in VR, AR, and smartwatches.”
Therefore, reducing costs is crucial for the future of Micro LED technology, or it risks following in OLED’s footsteps, remaining confined to the high-end market and failing to meet overall market demand.
Notably, several companies, including VISTAR, Tianma, Leyard, and SiTan Tech, launched or began mass production of Micro LED projects in 2024, covering micro production lines and mass production. Additionally, leading manufacturers like Tianma, BOE MLED, and AUO are set to start mass production in 2025, with AUO’s 4.5-generation Micro LED production line expected to be ready by then.
As more Micro LED production lines enter mass production, 2025 is expected to be a significant year for the commercial application of Micro LED technology. Industry insiders predict that Micro LED will see major breakthroughs in applications such as smart glasses and VR, although large-size applications like televisions still face hurdles.
11 new AR glasses featuring Micro LED technology are expected in 2024. Micro LED will capture 18% of the AR device market in 2024, with a projected market share of 44% by 2030.
In summary, while Micro LED is currently poised for commercial acceleration in the micro-display field, its application in large-size displays remains promising, driven by collective industry efforts. The future of Micro LED holds great potential.
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