The output value of Micro LED chips is estimated to reach approximately US$38.8 million in 2024, with large displays still being the main source of contribution, focus on AR and automotive needs.
TrendForce said that the Micro LED industry will face multiple challenges in 2024. First, the slowdown in chip miniaturization will affect the speed of cost reduction. Second, due to the high prices of Micro LED displays, terminal demand is weak, making it difficult to expand the shipment scale of large display products that have been mass-produced. In addition, the competitiveness of wearable devices has shifted to software optimization and software and hardware integration, which has suppressed the motivation of brand manufacturers to innovate hardware, thereby indirectly hindering the introduction of new display panels such as Micro LED. Finally, although automotive scenarios are still a key application of Micro LED, they are still in the introduction and verification stage and cannot contribute to actual output value.
TrendForce pointed out that in the main production links, as the yield rate of large-volume transfers continues to increase, new challenges will focus on maintenance technology. Although the industry already has complete detection solutions for traditional LEDs, there is still room for improvement when these methods are used on Micro LEDs with extremely large quantities and extremely small chip sizes. This is also a hurdle that the industry is currently eager to break through.
As a display technology, Micro LED continues to attract manufacturers to invest in development resources due to its high brightness, high contrast, and high transparency. Using these characteristics, Micro LED can be combined with transparent displays and car windows, and can also meet the needs of drivers and passengers for the integration of virtual and real information in car scenarios through AR-HUD (augmented reality head-up display) or P-HUD (panoramic head-up display). In addition, through the combination of Micro LED and silicon substrate, as a near-eye display light source for emerging AR glasses, it is also a benchmark form of new applications in the current popular head-mounted devices in the Metaverse.
To expand the commercialization of Micro LED technology, it is not appropriate to overly rely on the mature consumer electronics market. Instead, it should take advantage of the characteristics of its display, combine it with a variety of sensor solutions to empower the device, and find more imaginative niche applications. Looking ahead, as the technical bottleneck is broken, and the application of automotive display demand becomes more specific and the full-color solution of AR glasses becomes more mature, it is expected to drive the output value of Micro LED chips to grow to US$489 million in 2028.