01 Guoxing: Mini LED is gradually breaking the price bottleneck and speeding up the commercialization of the product
Recently, Guoxing Optoelectronics said in institutional research, the company’s product domestic and international orders demand by the epidemic is a phase of decline, the industry exports to domestic sales ratio increased. The company actively seized the limited market share during the epidemic, strategically adjusted the market positioning of some core products, and lowered the prices of some core products to meet the domestic product market demand, and the price and gross margin of domestic business decreased.
In recent years, the development of LED small-pitch display technology has opened up new opportunities for LED indoor applications. the launch of Mini LED has further met the demand for high-definition displays for high-end rental, TV, cinema screens, and small and medium-sized conference panels. As a leading RGB display packaging company, RGB display, especially small pitch, and Mini LED packaging, is the key development segment of the company at present.
In terms of product technology, Guoxing Mini LED has started batch shipments in the first half of 2019 and has successively launched a number of products such as IMD-M09T, IMD-M07, IMD-M05, etc. In December 2019, a dedicated Mini LED manufacturing department was established, and the production process technology has become more and more mature and widely recognized by customers. In terms of the product price, RGB launched cost-effective IMD0.9 standard version products in November this year, gradually breaking the relevant price bottleneck to meet broader market demand and accelerate the commercialization of IMD products.
In terms of capacity layout, from the current order situation of Guoxing’s Mini LED products, the product boom is good, but the capacity of this piece does not account for a high percentage. Therefore, the company plans to further enhance the scale of Mini LED production capacity in the first half of 2021. In addition, with the gradual implementation of the company’s 1.9 billion yuan new base expansion project, Guoxing’s overall production capacity scale is also expected to usher in a greater upgrade.
Regarding the expansion plan, Guoxing said that the first phase of the company’s one billion yuan expansion project has been completed in 2019, and all of them will be put into production and released in the first quarter of 2020, and the company expects to gradually release the second phase of 500 million yuan expansion capacity in the first and second quarters of 2021; meanwhile, the company plans to invest no more than 1.9 billion yuan in the construction of the Jili Industrial Park project, which is mainly used for building R&D and production sites, advanced LED packaging and application production lines, and the production of LEDs. The project will focus on the production of RGB small pitch, Mini LED and TOP LED products, which can be applied to the ultra-high definition, new intelligent display, smart home, optical communication, Internet of Things, etc. The total construction period of the project is 3-5 years, and the company plans to complete the construction of the project plant within two years, which is expected to be opened in 2021 to achieve a larger scale capacity growth.
02
Apple will release a mini LED version of the iPad in March
According to the latest reports from foreign media, Apple is already preparing for the spring launch in March this year, and the protagonist is the new iPad Pro, which has been exposed many times before.
The report mentions that Apple’s new iPad Pro is expected to be released in March this year, and if the stock availability is not too sufficient, then Apple is to consider a certain extension because they are still facing a lot of products production supply, not demand situation, such as the iPhone 12Pro series.
Sources have revealed that Apple is exploring the use of 10,000 LEDs Mini LED display, each below 200 microns. Because there are more LEDs and more dimming zones, Mini LED displays can provide deeper or darker blacks, higher brightness, richer colors, and greater contrast.
03
LG is also expected to use Mini LED backlighting in LCD TVs
As a well-known OLED TV manufacturer in the industry, LG is about to announce its new TVs for 2021. Interestingly, with Samsung, TCL, and other manufacturers, LG is also expected to use Mini LED backlighting in LCD 8K/4K TVs, so that the image quality of LCD TVs ushered in a qualitative leap.
Currently on the market claims to have supported the “full array of local dimming function” of high-end LCD TVs, usually involving hundreds of LED backlight can be fine-tuned according to the dark scene to black and contrast.
But LG’s MiniLED backlight solution can be more detailed and dense on top of that. By introducing up to 30,000,000 Mini LEDs and 2,500 local dimming zones, it is able to deliver incredible peak brightness and a contrast ratio of 1 million:1.
Compared to the company’s previous LCD products, the new QNED LCD panel delivers a higher contrast ratio, HDR dynamic range, higher color accuracy, and a high refresh rate of 120Hz like all of LG 2020’s flagship products.
