LED display industry development status and technological change direction

① A number of national policies support the healthy and rapid development of the LED display industry

The LED display industry is a strategic emerging industry that the country focuses on cultivating and developing, and is in line with the country's strategic development direction. At present, LED displays are mainly used in security monitoring centers, dispatching command centers, radio and television broadcasting, high-end conference video centers, high-definition electronic billboards and other fields. In recent years, the country has successively issued a number of industrial policies to support the healthy and rapid development of the LED industry.

First of all, the country's vigorous investment in "new infrastructure" has provided a broad space for the application of LED displays. The "New Infrastructure" Development White Paper issued by CCID Think Tank, a scientific research institution directly under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, pointed out that "new infrastructure" corresponds to the traditional "iron public infrastructure" and combines the characteristics of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation. Facing the national strategic needs, it is a strategic and network-based infrastructure with a multiplier effect that provides underlying support for economic and social innovation, coordination, green, open, and shared development. The "New Infrastructure" Development White Paper pointed out that it is estimated that by 2025, seven major areas such as 5G infrastructure, UHV, intercity high-speed railway and urban rail transit, new energy vehicle charging piles, big data centers, artificial intelligence, and industrial Internet " New Infrastructure”

Direct investment will reach about 10 trillion yuan, leading to accumulated investment or exceeding 17 trillion yuan. On March 4, 2020, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting, clearly emphasizing the acceleration of the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G networks and data centers. The above policies provide opportunities for the development of LED displays in the commercial field.

Secondly, the country is accelerating the growth of strategic emerging industries, creating a new engine for economic and social development, and promoting the continuous growth of strategic emerging industries such as LED display. In 2021, in order to implement the deployment requirements of the Fifth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the Party on the development of strategic emerging industries, the State Intellectual Property Office formulated the "Strategic Emerging Industry Classification and International Patent Classification Reference Relationship Table (2021) (Trial)" for Nine strategic emerging industries including the new generation of information technology industry, high-end equipment manufacturing industry, new material industry, biological industry, new energy vehicle industry, new energy industry, energy conservation and environmental protection industry, digital creative industry, and related service industries. Devices, LED application products, high-definition/ultra-high-definition broadcast TV, etc. are key products and services in strategic emerging industries.

Furthermore, the country's construction of smart cities and modern transportation systems will drive the growth of market demand for LED displays in the fields of security monitoring, command and dispatch.

On August 27, 2014, eight ministries and commissions including the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of Smart Cities" (Fagai Gaoji [2014] No. 1770), proposing to establish comprehensive fortification, integrated operation, precise positioning, and effective management and control Social security prevention and control system; integrate various video and image information resources, and promote the application of public security video networking.

On February 3, 2017, the State Council issued the "13th Five-Year Plan" Modern Comprehensive Transportation System Development Plan (Guo Fa [2017] No. 11), intending to promote intelligent coordinated dispatch and build a comprehensive transportation operation coordination and emergency dispatch command center , forming a dynamic perception, comprehensive coverage, and ubiquitous interconnection transportation operation monitoring system. In March 2021, the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 long-term goal outline require the construction of 5G-based application scenarios and industrial ecology, and carry out pilot demonstrations in key areas such as smart transportation, smart logistics, smart energy, and smart medical care.

In addition, the country's accelerated development of the ultra-high-definition video industry will generate demand for high-definition display screens. Small-pitch LED displays are expected to usher in more application scenarios, and the future market space will be broader. In March 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State Administration of Radio and Television, and China Central Radio and Television jointly issued the "Ultra-HD Video Industry Development Action Plan (2019-2022)", proposing the overall technical route of "4K first, taking into account 8K", vigorously Promote the development of the ultra-high-definition video industry and the application of related fields. By 2020, the number of 4K ultra-high-definition video users will reach 100 million; by 2022, the number of ultra-high-definition video users in China will reach 200 million, and the overall scale of the ultra-high-definition video industry will exceed 4 trillion Yuan, and realize the large-scale application of ultra-high-definition video in the fields of culture, education and entertainment, security monitoring, medical health, intelligent transportation, and industrial manufacturing.

In March 2020, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Special Action Plan for Digital Empowerment of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises", proposing to empower small and medium-sized enterprises with digitalization, networking and intelligence, to help small and medium-sized enterprises with epidemic prevention and control, resumption of work and production, and sustainable development, and to support epidemic prevention and control. Accelerate the development of new models and formats such as online office, online education, and telemedicine that emerged during the control period; support digital service providers to build smart office platforms, and launch solutions such as virtual cloud desktops and ultra-high-definition video to meet virtual team management and sensitive data prevention and control And other remote office scenarios to upgrade new requirements.

In March 2021, the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 long-term goal outline were released, which required accelerating the improvement of UHD TV program production and broadcasting capabilities, promoting high-definition transformation of TV channels, and promoting applications such as immersive video and cloud broadcasting; the National Development and Reform Commission, etc. The departments jointly released the "Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Cultivation of New Types of Consumption" to accelerate the development of new information products such as ultra-high-definition video and virtual reality, and promote the integrated application of 5G+4K/8K and VR/AR technology products.

In November 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Deep Integration of Informatization and Industrialization Development Plan" to promote the implementation of the "Ultra HD Video + 5G + AI + VR" integrated innovative application project. On January 6, 2022, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the General Office of the Central Propaganda Department, and the General Office of the State Administration of Radio and Television jointly issued the "Guidelines for the Implementation of the "Hundred Cities, Thousand Screens" Campaign." Lead, build or guide the transformation of domestic large screens into 4K/8K ultra-high-definition large screens, enrich ultra-high-definition video and audio service scenarios, and accelerate the integration and innovation of ultra-high-definition video and audio in various aspects.

In November 2021, in order to implement the "Proposals of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-term Goals for 2035" and "The Fourteenth National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China" Five-Year Plan and 2035 Long-term Goal Outline to promote the high-quality development of foreign trade. After the approval of the State Council, the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the High-quality Development of Foreign Trade": to optimize the layout of the international market and further optimize Import sources and export markets, strengthen market segment research, continue to deepen trade cooperation with developed economies, and actively expand trade with emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, Africa, etc.; optimize the structure of import and export commodities, and promote high-tech, high value-added equipment Enterprises participate in international cooperation at a higher level; promote the coordinated development of trade and two-way investment, encourage foreign capital to invest more in mid-to-high-end manufacturing, high-tech, traditional manufacturing transformation and upgrading, modern services and other fields, and give full play to the industries of national-level new areas and national-level development zones Gather and open platform advantages.

②Small-pitch LED displays are widely used in a wide range of fields, and the market demand is growing rapidly year by year

The LED display has the advantages of large display area, high brightness, bright colors, and easy assembly. In the field of outdoor and large-scale commercial display screens, compared with traditional splicing LCD displays, LED displays have no seams, no afterimages, high color saturation, low power consumption, wide color gamut, self-illumination and long service life. A series of advantages and so on are welcomed by the market. With the upgrading of consumption and product iteration in the field of LED display applications, the application scenarios of LED displays in the field of high-definition video display are gradually increasing, and they have been widely used in large-scale indoor and outdoor advertisements, stage performances, exhibitions, sports events, command and dispatch, and security monitoring , video conferencing and other scenarios.

LED display technology is constantly making breakthroughs towards smaller pixel pitches, and LED display products with pixel pitches smaller than 1.0mm have been developed. Due to the continuous increase in demand from downstream customers and the improvement of manufacturers' technologies and processes, the sales of small-pitch LED display products have grown rapidly, which has become the main driving force for the growth of the LED display application market. According to AVC data, in 2019 and 2020, China's small-pitch LED display market size will be 10.37 billion yuan and 11.8 billion yuan, respectively, with a year-on-year growth rate of 55.2% and 13.79%. In 2021, the sales of China's small-pitch LED display market will be about 18.15 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 53.9%. It is estimated that the sales volume of small-pitch LEDs will reach 57.3 billion yuan in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.6%.

In the field of large-screen splicing, small-pitch LED displays are gradually replacing DLP rear projection and LCD splicing products by virtue of their comparative advantages in product performance and increasingly prominent cost advantages. At present, the application of small-pitch LED display products maintains a high-speed growth. With the improvement of technology, the performance of small-pitch LED products will be further improved in the future, and the production cost will gradually decrease. The application demand of small-pitch LED display products in outdoor, commercial and civil markets will also increase greatly.

③ COB technology has become the direction of technological change for small-pitch LED displays

A. Introduction of LED display panel preparation technology

In the field of LED display, with the development of midstream packaging technology, the industry has gradually formed a

COB-based LED display panel preparation technology. SMD packaging is to package brackets, chips, leads, epoxy resin and other materials into lamp beads of different specifications, and then use a high-speed placement machine to solder the lamp beads to the circuit with high-temperature reflow soldering.

Display units with different pitches are made on the board. The COB display is to directly bind the LED chip on the PCB board with the driving circuit, and then encapsulate the LED chip with encapsulation glue, which integrates the midstream packaging and downstream display applications together.

COB adopts the way of overall packaging, which avoids the high-temperature damage caused by the different expansion coefficients of materials in the SMD display panel during the reflow soldering process. The dead light rate of COB display products is usually only one tenth of that of SMD display products, and the after-sales maintenance cost is low. . Secondly, under the traditional SMD technology path, the solder feet between the packaged device and the PCB board are exposed, and the protection is poor; while the COB technology path mounts the LED chip on the PCB circuit board, and then covers and fixes it with optical resin to form a protective shell , with higher stability, reliability and adaptability.

Finally, COB display products have less process links and consumables, and these two costs account for a larger cost in SMD display products with smaller pixel pitches. Therefore, COB has advantages in manufacturing costs in the field of small-pitch LED displays. Especially in products with a pixel pitch below 1mm, the difficulty of SMD placement increases, and the cost increases significantly. At this time, the cost advantage of COB will be highlighted.

Therefore, in the process of high-density pixel pitch, SMD technology has exposed its inevitable limitations of lower yield rate, higher maintenance cost, poor protection, and difficulty in mass production with a pitch of less than 1mm. The COB display adopts the technical route of integrated packaging, which saves the step of packaging a single lamp bead and then attaching it, which solves the above-mentioned problems that occur when the pixel pitch of SMD products is reduced. Compared with SMD technology, COB technology has obvious advantages in the field of high pixel density LED display, and will become the core technology for future LED display applications.

C. Product development trend of LED display panel preparation technology SMD and COB

At present, the production of small-pitch LED display products in the market is dominated by SMD technology, mainly because compared with SMD, COB is more technically difficult in the integration and packaging stage, and has no obvious advantages in products with larger pixel pitches. Therefore, COB is not the earliest route choice for small-pitch LED display products. However, as LED display products continue to develop towards higher pixel density and smaller pixel pitch, COB will become the direction of technological change for small-pitch LED displays.

After several years of development, the specific fields of small-pitch LED display applications can be divided into three categories: professional display, commercial display and civilian display. Among them, the demand for professional display is concentrated in national defense, government, and public utilities. Commercial display belongs to civilian commercial scenarios, including exhibition halls, exhibition halls, airport stations, cinemas, video conferencing, and education. Civilian small-pitch LED displays are concentrated in Large size home TV products. At present, small-pitch LED displays have become the mainstream of LED displays, and the penetration rate in the professional display field is relatively considerable, while the high-end commercial display field has become the most potential market, including advertising, commercial retail, conference rooms, cinemas and other segments . Compared with the professional display field, the small-pitch LED display has entered the commercial display for a short time, has a wide range of application scenarios, and has a large development space. With the cost reduction, it can quickly form a scale. In the field of civilian display, the trend of large-screen TVs continues to advance. In the future, with the gradual maturity of small-pitch or even Micro LED display technology and the decline in manufacturing prices, Micro LED display technology will gradually become popular in the household field.

A. Application in professional display field

Professional display is the earliest field of application of small-pitch LED displays from outdoors to indoors, mainly including military, security, traffic command, energy and other subdivided scenes related to military and government. The demand for informatization and intelligent display is the root cause of the first successful application of small-pitch LED displays in the professional display field. Small-pitch LED displays have the characteristics of wide viewing angle, high refresh rate, low power consumption, and no seams. , traffic command and other departments of the visual system upgrade needs.

According to DISCIEN's "China LED Small Pitch Market Research Report", in the first half of 2022, China's small-pitch LED display sales, in terms of industries, TOP3 industries are government departments, public security, and governments at all levels, with a total share of 46.4%. A year-on-year decrease of 2 percentage points; with the layout of various brands in the distribution channel market and the increase in shipments, it also helped the growth of sub-sectors other than the government, such as transportation, energy, medical care and other industries. Development in the direction of diversification and subdivision.

In the future, the growth of the professional display field will come from the replacement of the display screens that have been put into use in the early stage, and the trend of the small-pitch LED display screen penetrating into the lower-level administrative units in the government-related fields. On the other hand, in order to adapt to the new social security and emergency rescue needs, the emergency department's demand for small-pitch LED displays is also in a stage of rapid growth.

B. Application in commercial display field

The commercial display field includes a series of subdivided scenes such as exhibition halls, exhibition halls, airport stations, cinemas, video conferencing and education. Since the development of small-pitch LEDs, the dot pitch has been continuously reduced, achieving a technological breakthrough from P2.5 to P0.9. With the further reduction of pixel pitch, LED products have entered more application fields, and the cost reduction has made small-pitch LEDs enter the commercial display field, becoming the main driving force for small-pitch LEDs to maintain a high boom. In the future, the replacement of the original xenon projection with small-pitch LED display screens and small-pitch LED display screens in cinemas at major airports and railway stations at home and abroad is expected to become a new growth point in the field of commercial display.

Applications in the field of video conferencing include a series of subdivided application scenarios such as business conferences, lecture halls, auditoriums, and office meeting rooms. Conventional conference room displays generally use LCD TVs. Due to technical and cost constraints, it is difficult for LCD TVs to be larger than 100 inches, while LEDs have no size limit in theory. At present, the video conferencing market has also entered the stage of rapid penetration of small-pitch LED screens, which have been successfully applied in large enterprises and institutions. According to the data of Aowei Cloud, the number of meeting rooms in China has exceeded 20 million, and the number of meeting rooms in the world is as high as 100 million. If the proportion of large and medium-sized meeting rooms is 5%, the penetration rate of LED small-pitch screens reaches 10%, and each screen If the price is maintained at a reasonable level, the domestic market scale will reach tens of billions. With the increase in the penetration rate of small-pitch LED displays, the sales scale in the field of video conferencing is expected to reach a larger scale.

In the field of smart education, due to the imbalance of educational resources in China, recording and broadcasting equipment has developed rapidly in education and teaching. Combining network technology and cloud storage technology can promote the effective transmission and transmission of high-quality educational resources to a certain extent, allowing more schools Teachers and students get access to high-quality teaching courses and acquire knowledge through episodic lessons. On September 13, 2022, the Bureau of the Ministry of Education issued a letter "Pre-Notice on Quickly Doing a Good Job in Project Reserves", planning to implement phased incentive policies for vocational colleges and colleges and universities for new loans for equipment purchase and renewal. Focus on supporting the purchase of major equipment and supporting facilities for teaching and scientific research in vocational colleges and universities, experimental training, and the construction of supporting facilities, as well as the purchase of major equipment for high-level, professional, open production-education integration training bases based on the construction of vocational colleges.

C. Application in home display field

The trend of large-screen home TVs continues to upgrade. According to AVC data, the retail sales of TV products of 65 inches and above will account for 34.5% in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 9.5%. As a display technology with excellent comprehensive performance, Micro LED display technology has a series of outstanding advantages such as self-illumination, high brightness, high contrast, high color saturation, and long life. Moreover, the seamless splicing of Micro LED TVs makes it easy to realize large-screen, and it also overcomes the difficulty of traditional large-size TVs being difficult to transport, with excellent comprehensive performance.

At present, due to the limitations of the manufacturing process, the price of Micro LED is relatively high, and it is difficult to enter the homes of ordinary people. However, in the field of large-scale high-end home applications such as home theaters, manufacturers such as Samsung and LG have launched relatively mature Micro LED products.

With the gradual maturity of the Micro LED manufacturing process and the continuous drop in price, it is expected to replace LCD and OLED technologies in the future as the new core technology for display terminals such as home TVs, computer monitors, and mobile phone screens. To sum up, small-pitch LED display products have rich application scenarios, bringing a broad market space for COB small-pitch LED display products.