For LED industry players in Taiwan who have been facing stiff competition from China’s supply chain and South Korea’s monopoly on OLED technologies, creating new business opportunities in Mini LED and Micro LED could be a solution. However, Chinese companies are also rushing into the Mini LED and Micro LED markets with recognition of the growth potential there. At the moment when Micro LED has yet to reach technological maturity, and Mini LED sets to enter a phase of explosive market growth. What are the roles of Chinese companies in the L...

Many major trade fairs and exhibitions for 2020 have been postponed or cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, worldwide companies operating in different industries have delayed unveiling their new technologies. However, Micro LED technology developers may have a chance to achieve technological breakthroughs during this time of crisis because of opportunities that lie within this field of innovative display solutions. The first half of 2020 also saw noteworthy activities and events related to the R&D of Micro LED. (Image: AUO) The COVID-19 ...

The LED industry is gaining increasing attention from the market as the largest consumer electronics company is said to launch several products using Mini LED backlight display technology. LED industry players are looking forward to increasing demand created by the innovative display technology and hope to get away from the dark time of oversupply and low-price competition. Nevertheless, LED companies can hardly work on their own to create Mini LED and Micro LED miracles. These miniaturized LEDs are only a hundredth or even thousandth of a conventional LED an...

Mini LED and Micro LED, the novel display technologies based on LED, have lit up the industry which long suffered from low price competition. As worldwide companies and research institutes pouring resources into technology development in the past years and building up partnerships to formulate new ecosystem, several Micro and Mini LED achievements were revealed. Display products using Mini LED backlight are launched and Micro LED prototypes also continue to achieve breakthroughs. (Image: Pixabay) Apple’s rumor of launching Mini LED backlight techn...

iBeam Materials, the leader in enabling large-area monolithic Micro LED displays using GaNoX technology (including GaN-on-metal and GaN-on-Glass), announced that the company will be presenting its technology updates at two key industry conferences in the coming weeks. These conferences will be held entirely online and our presentations will be readily accessible by viewers unable to travel. These talks will discuss the advent of paper-thin, ultra-flexible Micro LED displays using iBeam’s unique GaNoX technology that will eliminate the traditional restrict...

According to the latest report by LEDinside, the research division of TrendForce, “2020 Global Automotive LED Product Trend and Regional Market Analysis,” automotive LED market demand steadily increase by advanced technologies, such as intelligent headlamp, central tunnel taillights, HDR automotive display, ambient light, etc. TrendForce analyze automotive LED market development by five directions, including automotive lighting and display product trend, automotive lamp player revenue and development strategies, LED player revenue performance and pro...

Korea researchers announced that they have developed a GaN Micro LED that can be folded and cut by scissors. The team demonstrate a method of creating a deformable LED based on remote heteroepitaxy of GaN. The research, titled “Remote heteroepitaxy of GaN microrod heterostructures for deformable light-emitting diodes and wafer recycle,” was published in Science Advances on June 3, 2020. The research was jointly conducted by professor from Sejong University and the University of Texas. The team manufactured Micro LEDs on a graphene-coated wafer ...

Taiwanese LED chip maker Epistar and Lextar are going to form a new holding company, aiming to intensify its growing momentum in next-gen display technologies Mini LED and Micro LED. LEDinside noticed that Apple, who is reportedly launching Mini LED-based products, could be a nudge that lead to the alliance of Epistar and Lextar. Rumors of Apple to release several Mini LED backlight technology adopted products including a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, a 14.1-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro in 2020 and 2021 have been going on since last year. Epistar, the Taiwan com...

Two Taiwan-based LED companies, Epistar and Lextar, announced yesterday (June 18) that they will jointly set up a new holding company via share conversion. Through the collaboration, the two companies aim to integrate their resource and focus on their expertise to speed Mini LED and Micro LED technology development. For the new holding company, Epistar and Lextar will swap one share for 0.5 and 0.275 shares respectively. The share swap is scheduled to be completed on October 20, 2020. Once the new holding company is listed upon the share swap date, both Epistar a...

Micro LED technology supplier PlayNitride said that it aims to reduce production cost of Micro LED chip by 95% in five years to meet the requirement of mass production and is continue to raise funding. Charles Li, CEO of PlayNitride, noted that the two major keys of Micro LEDs are to make them small and cheap, which is the current challenge for commercialization. In order to achieve the goal, it is critical to connect the supply chain from wafer manufacture, chip process, transfer technology, display module, backplane driver and system tuning. Most of the processes ...

French research institute CEA-Leti announced that its researchers have broken the throughput world record of 5.1 Gbps in visible light communications (VLC) using a single GaN blue Micro LED. Their data transmission rate of 7.7 Gbps achieved with a 10 µm Micro LED marks another step toward commercialization and widespread use of LiFi communication. (Image: CEA-Leti) VLC, or LiFi (light fidelity), is an emerging wireless communication system that offers an alternative or a complementary technology to radio frequency (RF) systems such as WiFi and...

LED video display company announces the financial results of its fiscal 4Q20 and 2020 ending May 2. 2020. Daktronics reported fiscal year 2020 net sales of US$608.9 million, operating loss of US$0.2 million and net income of US$0.5 million. This compares to net sales of $569.7 million, operating loss of US$4.7 million, and net loss of US$1.0 million for fiscal 2019. Fiscal 2020 orders were US$620.8 million compared to US$608.9 million for fiscal 2019. For fiscal 4Q20, Daktronics registered net sales of US$126.1 million, operating loss of US$3.5 million, and...

Apple is reportedly preparing the new iPad and MacBook adopting Mini LED technology coming later this year or later while its progress in Micro LED technology has yet enter the next phase. It was said that the Apple Watch Series will feature OLED screen which is similar to the previous model, instead of Micro LED. An anonymous Twitter account who has revealed several Apple products details accurately twitted on May 31 suggesting that Apple will use display from JDI, who supplies OLED panels for Apple Watch. (Image: Apple) Since Apple initiat...

Micro LED and Mini LED technology bring new hopes for industry players in the field since they have been suffered from price competition with oversupply. Taiwanese LED companies were the first to begin Micro LED and Mini LED development and they have entered mass production phase for Mini LED in the past two years. In 2020, as Apple is rumored to release Mini LED-based products, it is expected that demands for Mini LED display technology will surge. Seeing the trend, LED and display companies in China are also pushing their technology development aim...

Rumors of Apple’s smart glasses products have never stopped but now they are even more materialized. Jon Prosser, host of Front Page Tech, unveiled alleged details about the AR glasses that Apple might reveal. It was said that Apple will call its AR glasses “Apple Glass,” which will pair with an iPhone like Apple Watch. There will be displays for both lenses and LiDAR sensors will be adopted to enable gesture interaction. In addition, the glasses will be wireless charged. (Image: screenshot from the video of Front Page Tech) Prosser cl...

Apple was reported last week that it has planned to invest US$334 million for the new facility in Taiwan, located in the Longtan section of Hsinchu Science Park. The new factory is believed to focus on Micro LED and Mini LED technologies which Apple aims to apply in its new products. Taiwanese companies Epistar and AUO as well as other companies of the Mini LED and Micro LED supplier chains are reportedly supporting Apple’s products adopting the next-gen display technologies. Apart from getting closer with its partners, another major reason for Ap...

Recently it is reported that Apple is planning to invest around US$ 334 million for its new facility in Taiwan to push development in Micro LED and Mini LED display technology with its local partners Epistar and AUO. Many believe that the iPhone maker will intensify its display technologies including Mini LED and Micro LED with the mature LED supply chain in Taiwan covering wafer manufacture, chip production, chip testing and display fabrication. LEDinside covered in November 2019 that Apple has almost finished the construction of the new facility in ...

A research team at Seoul National University (SNU) successfully grew a Micro LED array on a 100 nm-thick sapphire nano-membrane. The results were published on Scientific Reports on May 5, 2020. According to the published paper, the team, led by Euijoon Yoon of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of SNU, designed the sapphire nano-membrane array to grow an array of multi-faced Micro LEDs sized 4 μm × 16 μm. With the method, the Micro LED chip singulation does not need to go through plasma etching process, leading to a better ext...

Apple has begun construction of its new facility in Taiwan since last year and LEDinside covered the progress of the building in November 2019. Now the iPhone maker was said to develop innovative display technologies, Micro LED and Mini LED, with its partners in Taiwan, Epistar and AUO, according Taiwanese media, Economic Daily. (Apple's new facility in Taoyuan, Taiwan) The facility is said to be focus on Micro LED and Mini LED technology for iPhone or iPad display applications. As the facility is built within the Longtan Science Park under...

Compound Photonics (CP), a U.S.-based AR/MR microdisplay solutions developer, announced the launch of its digital backplane which enables Micro LED technology builder for high definition microdisplay subsystem integration. CP re-engineered its market-ready LCoS backplane technology into an innovative constant current drive configuration for Micro LED pixels based on its 0.26-inch (~3 μm pixel) 1080p display format. The technology can be integrated with Micro LED displays to accelerate the manufacture process by bonding the devices to a backplane driven by C...

A research team at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) announced their achievement in manufacturing InGaN red LEDS with a peak wavelength of 665nm as well as improved light output power and external quantum efficacy. Their achievement is believed to support more efficient process of full color Micro LED display development. (Image: KAUST) One of the challenges of Micro LED display is producing red LEDs with GaN, which is considered almost impossible, according to Kazuhiro Ohkawa, leader of the research group. Red colo...

Mojo Vision, the Invisible Computing company who is developing smart contact lens with Micro LED technology, announced by the end of April its additional funding raised in Series B-1 investment round. The found will be used to gear up the development of Mojo Lens, the smart contact lens to realize AR applications. (Image: Mojo Vision) Mojo Vision has raised US$51 million in the B-1 round, bringing the total funding to date to more than US$159 million. The latest round of funding was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from top stra...

In a report covered by Driving Vision News (DVN) in December 2019, we found that Valeo’s PictureBeam system was tested. The adaptive driving beam (ADB) system was co-developed by Valeo and Cree with a resolution of nearly 4000 pixels to deliver road marking functions. ADB system with high resolution is a trend for automotive lighting. Many automotive component manufacturers have teamed up with LED companies to develop LED array solutions based on Micro LEDs. The PictureBeam system created by Valeo and Cree is one of them. The two companies demonst...

Taiwan-based display manufacturer AUO has partnered with PlayNitride to unveil their latest Micro LED technology development. The two companies leverage their expertise and developed a 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED display with the world's highest 228 PPI pixel density, achieving yet another industry milestone with pioneering technological breakthroughs. The 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED display is based on an LTPS TFT driven backplane which allows pixels to be lighted separately. With a high-speed mass transfer technology, more than 5.5 million Micro LED...

The world sweeping COVID-19 pandemic is leading to delay in production as well as some new projects in the industry as many companies have temporary closed their facilities and the supply chain was interrupted. New technology developments might be affected under the challenging time as well. LEDinside shares its insights toward Micro LED technology development in such a global uncertainty and points out that it might be a chance for the next-gen display technology to move a step forward. (Image: LEDinside) According to LEDinside, delays of equipment and material d...

Compound Photonics (CP), a provider of compact high-resolution microdisplay solutions for AR and MR applications introduced a compact, high brightness 1080p optical engine reference design that fits into a volume under 3 cubic centimeters (3cc). The product is optimized for CP’s 0.26-inch Micro LED Integrated Display Module (IDM) with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 resolution and 3.015μm pixel, which will accelerate development of AR/MR smart glasses. (Image: Compound Photonics) The 0.26-inch Micro LED IDM was jointly developed by Compound Ph...

Micro LED as the innovative display technology is expected to replace TFT-LCD and OLED display in the near future with its high performance including high resolution, high contrast, self-emission, low power consumption and long life. However, the technology still encounter several bottlenecks. The most challenging one for researchers and manufacturers is the notorious mass transfer process which requires bonding RGB LED chips to display backplane accurately and efficiently. The task also needs to tackle the issues caused by different chip materials such as breakable...

Australia-based BluGlass updated its business operation recently, presenting its developments in its direct-to-market Laser Diode business unit (launched October 2019) and recent progress on its Micro LED and LED programs. (Image: Pixabay) BluGlass has processed new RPCVD tunnel junction laser diode test structures which replaces the heavily lossy and resistive p-AlGaN cladding layers needed in standard laser diodes, paving the way for laser diodes improvement with reduced optical loss. The BluGlass US based Test Facility is on track for completion and f...

LEDinside, a division of the global market intelligence firm TrendForce, says that significant progress in the evolution of Micro LED technologies during the recent period has attracted the interest of many supply chain actors. Companies that are now pursuing Micro LED include material and equipment providers in the upstream, component suppliers in the mid-stream, and brand vendors of whole devices in the downstream. In trying to gain a foothold in this field, they are disrupting the traditional ecosystem of the electronics sector and contributing to the formation of a new ind...

Since last year, manufacturers of LEDs, panels, and systems across the globe have displayed Micro LED-related products at major international exhibitions. Applications include automotive and indoor fine-pitch displays. This has kick started a Micro LED trend across the world. At the beginning of this year, leading industry players including Taiwan’s ITRI, Japan’s Sony, and Korea’s Samsung, LG, and Seoul Semiconductor have all presented the latest Micro LED technology at CES 2020. As one of the major focuses in the display industry, Mi...