Just now the beginning of 2021, the two international giants of small-pitch LED large screen (manufacturer word "micro-led") have made efforts. Samsung and Sony have launched their own new products one after another. Among them, Sony has launched new products in the second round in five years. It fully reflects the general trend of the first year of "micro-led in 2021".
However, for the two major manufacturers (if Apple is adding the micro-led backlight of IPAD, it is the three major manufacturers - the three most influential giants in consumer electronics in the world), the micro-led products launched are obvious:
The very different new Sony and Samsung micro-led products
On January 7, 2021, Samsung Electronics released its 2021 Neo QLED, MICRO LED and Lifestyle TV new products, which is the First Look online launch event held by Samsung before the 2021 International Consumer Electronics Exhibition (CES 2021). Among them, MICRO LED products include 110'', 99'', 88'' and other models. They adopt micron-level LED light source from a luminous design, including 24 million individually controlled LEDs - 4K resolution products (4K*RGB three primary color LED = more than 24 million LED light beads). At the same time, Samsung's high-end Neo QLED TV will also fully adopt ultra-thin mini-led light sources with a new array molding structure.
or, in other words, Samsung color TV products, the new products in 2021 mainly rely on Mini/mirco-led technology in terms of "large size", "color improvement", "ultra-thin and full-screen advancement".
Almost at the same time, Sony also brought the second generation of black color crystal micro-LED large-screen products: B series and C Series modular products. Each module in the B Series has a resolution of 384×216, a pixel spacing of 1.56 mm, and each module in the C Series has a resolution of 480×270, a pixel spacing of 1.26 mm. Among them, the C Series products are equivalent to the core spacing parameters of the first generation of black color screens.
Sony said that several of its consumer TV technologies will also be applied to micro-LED displays, including the X1 video processor, MotionFlow technology for smoother images, and 22-bit Super – Bit Mapping mapping technology for smoother color transitions. Its micro-LED display can achieve brightness up to 1800 nits, wide color gamut, 1000000:1 contrast ratio, HDR, 120fps HFR and Many functions such as 3D. However, Sony did not say that these products are "home color TVs"!
Samsung's new micro-LED products, 110 and 99 inches, are typical color TV products; Sony still focuses on engineering and commercial LED splicing product models - this is a huge difference in the product definitions of the two. At the same time, Samsung products achieve 4K resolution on 99 inches, with pixel spacing between 0.4-0.6 mm; this is completely different from the resolution level of the P1.2 and P1.5 and above pitch products launched by Sony.
(Of course, Sony's new generation of color TV products in 2021 also uses mini-led technology on the LCD backlight. This is similar to Samsung's new color TV and Apple IPAD embracing the new LED backlight.) Why is
different? The "market" between Samsung and Sony touches
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Sony can't handle Samsung's point spacing indicator! The best explanation should be that the market capabilities of the two are different!
On the one hand, Samsung has been the world's largest color TV company for more than ten consecutive years. And its global market share is very high! Especially in developed countries in Europe and the United States, in which high-end TVs are in large numbers, Samsung has a greater advantage. This determines that using micro-led technology to create brand new high-end flagship products. Even if the price is as high as one million, Samsung has greater "market confidence". Relatively speaking, Sony's global color TV sales have hovered in five in recent years Among the six, the sales scale is only one-percent of that of Samsung, and its potential "market size" of color TVs that promote new technology systems is also lower.
On the other hand, judging from the historical application of small-pitch LED large screens, more than 60% of the market currently still demands P1.2 and p1.5 levels of products - because large screen displays, engineering large screens, and large screens of dozens of square meters or even hundreds of square meters have a larger viewing distance, and the eye detail resolution ability is reduced on a larger distance. This means that lower pixel pitch lacks more practical significance in addition to increasing costs.If higher density pixels and smaller spacing are less rewarded than higher cost, there will be "no market". Sony launches more mature spacing indicator products on micro-led, which is a compromise between efficiency improvement and cost control.
In fact, since 2019, many domestic companies such as Zhouming, Lianjian, Guoxing, Liyade , Altai AET, Abisen and have launched mini/micro-led products. Against the backdrop of the fact that the P0.4 level spacing in China has long been released, Samsung's 99-inch 4K screen cannot talk about "new breakthroughs in indicators". ——In the words of industry experts, micro-led now has no problem of display limits, but there is a problem of demand limits:
, that is, the ultra-large display of large screen projects does not require too small resolution: "The viewing distance determines the minimum pixel spacing that the eye can distinguish. The dot distance is lower than this value, which has almost no practical significance, but will significantly increase the cost." At the same time, if we develop closer display applications, such as conference rooms, color TVs, etc., and develop a 100-200-inch market, micro-led will have to face cost pressure.
The latter, for example, in the security monitoring market, most large-screen displays use LCD splicing screens, with a display area ranging from several square meters to more than ten square meters. This LCD LCD cell with a market spacing of 3.5 mm can easily achieve 4K resolution, and the price is only a few thousand yuan - that is, the unit area presents more details and is cheaper, and the security monitoring has a stronger bearing on the screen joint segmentation effect. In such applications, the small-pitch LED large screen of P0.4 meets the resolution requirements, but the price is more than ten times that of LCD splicing; the product cost of P1.5 has been reduced, but the information capacity per unit area is insufficient.
If mirco-led further sinks into the demand for large screens of 70-110-inch in the household color TV market, it will inevitably face the "cost pressure" of ordinary consumers who only need a few thousand yuan in TVs, and most high-end customers also only need a dozens of yuan in TVs. In contrast, Samsung can rely on the advantages of its global color TV market NO.1, "only pinch the pyramid", and those users who don't care about the cost and only care about the effect: after all, the rich circle likes luxury goods and has legends like golden toilets.
However, for most color TV companies and most LED large-screen companies, there is no high-end expansion ability of the "color TV market" like Samsung - even Sony will "discover" at this level! This leads to Samsung's MICRO-LED efforts to attack color TVs, while other MICRO-LED companies, such as Sony, pay more attention to the product layout in the mature field of "commercial engineering". The difference in "market capabilities" of
and the different target markets determine that the MICRO-LED products launched by Samsung and Sony in early 2021 are huge differences!
Mini/mirco-led small-pitch large screen What is the next step for large screens?
For traditional command centers, large-screen advertising, digital signage and other applications, the Mini/mirco-led small-pitch is below P1.0, especially the technical exploration of the spacing below P0.6 has already been in a state of "absolute excess". The industry believes that the rise of the Mini/mirco-led small-pitch LED market must be closely related to the exploration of new "demand".
In terms of the latter, Samsung's attempts to color TV products are a good direction. In 2019, Leyard has reduced the price of 110-inch color TV to 80,000 yuan. Judging from the global market size of 220-240 million to 240 million in color TVs per year, or the domestic market size of 45,000 units per year, even if the sales of LED large-screen color TVs are limited, such as one thousandth, it will be a considerable market: corresponding to the domestic market, sales of 30 to 40 billion - and according to relevant data, the domestic small-pitch LED large-screen market size in 2020 will only be 9.8 billion after ten years of development.
So the charm of the color TV market is not that "Mini/mirco-led" large screens have become the mainstream, but that the total demand for color TVs is too large: only a small part is needed, which is a "big incremental cake" for the LED display industry.
At the same time, in addition to the extreme technology breaking through new markets, Sony seems to be more optimistic about the growth of the "stock market": P1.0 and above small-pitch LED screen products have become a popular product. In the future 5G video application, smart city, and digital society construction, it will inevitably continue to be the main force in many traditional commercial display and engineering display fields, and the total market scale growth is expected.Especially considering that my country's domestic market currently accounts for a high proportion of P1.0-P2.0 small-pitch LED screens, that is, the global market outside of China is still in a state of development. As an international brand, Sony's growth in this mature product cannot be ignored.
Mini/mirco-led technology combined with new packaging such as COB can significantly improve the "reliability and destructive resistance" of traditional small-pitch LED market products and improve the display effect. This will further facilitate the expansion of the demand for traditional small-pitch LED applications. Sony chose P1.2 and P1.5 products, which is precisely based on this mature market logic and is planning the future battle of Mini/mirco-led.
Whether it is new application scenarios or traditional application requirements, Mini/mirco-led large screens have huge potential. Relevant forecasts show that in the next two or three years, the penetration rate of Mini/MicroLED small-pitch market can reach 30%, with a market size of about 8.5 billion yuan per year. In combination with the growth of demand for traditional small-pitch LED large-screens, the overall scale of the small-pitch LED market will double in two or three years compared with 2020.
To sum up, no matter what the differences between Samsung and Sony's specific products and market routes are, it does not prevent them from continuing to output positive energy for the overall Mini/MicroLED small-pitch market. The Mini/MicroLED small-pitch market can be said to be a "bomb rising" in 2021, and it is highly likely that the market will enter a rapid development track throughout the year. The Mini/MicroLED small-pitch market, which has three years of preheating and technical product reserves, is about to enter the first year of application explosion.
