“The market size declined for four consecutive years” and “shipments hit a ten-year low”, color TV seems to have become the most difficult category in the home appliance industry to cross the cycle. The decline without losing the bright spot is the overall performance of the color TV industry in 2023, Mini LED TV is one of the highlights, which means that the popularity of color TV to a higher level, at the same time, with the innovation of the color TV industry application scenario, the technical barriers between the traditional display industry and the color TV industry in the past are being quickly broken. A new round of color TV competition has just begun.
01 Technology breakthrough, cost optimization, Mini LED TV continues to increase
Recently, industry research institutions intensively released the 2023 color TV industry annual report summary. Overall, the OVI Cloud network report pointed out that in 2023, China’s color TV market retail sales and retail sales fell 13.6% and 2.3% respectively. According to data from Lotu Technology, shipments of TV brand complete machines in 2023 fell 8.4% year-on-year, especially in the second half of the year, the decline expanded to 14.3%.
However, different from the overall decline of the color TV market, Mini LED TV achieved a high increase in 2023 domestic market sales of 920,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 140%. “Mini LED TV this track, from 22 years has begun to have significant growth, from the statistical data, the Chinese market Mini LED TV sales from 2021 100,000 units, to 2022 380,000 units, and then to 23 920,000 units, has been showing a rapid growth trend, 2024 will also double growth.” Luo Tu technology (RUNTO) TV industry chain senior analyst Wang Xianming told the State grid.
From the perspective of technical development, Mini LED is based on the improvement of traditional LCD in the luminous backplane technology, and with the support of a new generation of display chips to achieve a substantial improvement of the traditional LCD short board, while the image quality accuracy and contrast are basically benchmarked OLED, but effectively avoid problems such as OLED screen burning, and greatly improve the service life.
“At present, from the point of view of visual parameters, Mini LED with the help of technological transformation to wake up a large number of old LCD production capacity in the industry, so that traditional LCD manufacturers in the LED technology upgrade period, but also to maintain enough market competitiveness, because an LCD production line after improvement can produce LCD, and can produce Mini LED,” So the cost of production is greatly reduced.” Independent international strategy researcher Chen Jia to the state grid reporter admitted.
According to Tianfeng Securities analysts pointed out that at present, the domestic Mini LED industry supply chain is more mature, the path of cost reduction is more clear, upstream chip, midstream packaging manufacturers actively respond to demand growth, downstream brand in-depth integration layout to seek development, reduce costs to release demand, but also continue to promote the penetration of Mini LED. According to TrendForce, the global Mini LED TV penetration rate will increase from 3% in 2023 to 12% in 2027.
Specifically, domestic Mini LED has made a great breakthrough in the industrial chain. For example, recently, the global TV foundry leader Zhaochi shares mentioned in the 2023 performance forecast that the company has made substantial breakthroughs in chip miniaturization technology, Mini RGB chip miniaturization can achieve a free fall in cost under the premise of the same light efficiency, and also help the Mini LED display industry chain continue to reduce costs. At the same time, with the technology and experience in the Mini LED backlight package, Zhaochi shares service customers covering domestic and foreign head TV brands.
Another enterprise that has established advantages in the Mini LED industry chain also includes Konka, according to Konka’s public disclosure recently, currently located in Chongqing Konka Semiconductor photoelectric Science and Technology Park has been put into production, not only built a Mini/Micro LED chip small-scale mass production line and a huge transfer pilot line of the complete process. Moreover, it also has a comprehensive testing capability of MLED testing center and direct display product production capacity, and its production of Mini LED chips has been continuously supplied to internal and external customers, covering commercial displays, large-scale monitoring, studios, exhibitions, theaters and so on.
02 Manufacturers carry out research and development of segmentation scenarios, and Mini LED is still a transitional technology
“From the global market point of view, Mini LED TV also showed rapid growth, the main brands include foreign brands Samsung, LGE and Sony, Chinese brands including TCL, Hisense, Skyworth and Xiaomi.” Based on the layout of the head brand, in 2024, the configuration of Mini LED backlight technology on the super-size will continue to improve significantly, especially for 75-inch and 115-inch TVS.” Wang Xianming said.
However, for TV manufacturers, despite the new development opportunities brought by the upgrading of consumer demand, they still have to face the decline of the color TV industry market and the decline of the opening probability to less than 30%, and with the convergence of marketing strategies, and the technical barriers between the traditional display industry and the color TV industry in the past are being quickly broken, how to establish a differentiated advantage, Creating new technological barriers is crucial.
“Today’s color TV brand essentially fight or technical strength, especially the rise of a new generation of Internet of Things technology and strong artificial intelligence, open up the interface of the traditional color TV industry, the future color TV brand is not only a color TV design and supplier, consumer purchase decisions increasingly emphasize the product in the actual scene watching experience, Color TV, display, smart screen, all-in-one machine and other home, office, commercial, medical scenarios of customized products emerge in an endless stream, and these customized products based on different scenarios are the research and development strength of color TV manufacturers, the future color TV industry will rely on the rigidity of the demand for viewing movies to become a new competitive blue ocean.”
In addition, Dong Min, deputy secretary general of the China Electronic Video Industry Association, also said in an interview with the State Grid that for TV, first of all should be integrated into the home center, whether in appearance, or in terms of functional needs, consumers now have different TV needs, there are different scenes such as watching movies, games, learning, fitness and so on. Therefore, TV manufacturers should carry out research and development of segmented scenarios for different user groups, such as the mobile smart screen, which is more popular now, in fact, there is no big difference from traditional TV, but it meets the use needs of some people. Therefore, although the progress of The Times has made TV no longer the “C” bit of the family, it has played its greatest function in different scenes to meet the needs of users.
From the perspective of the layout of mainstream brands, LCD, Mini LED, OLED, QNED, laser TV and so on are the current prevailing TV display technology, Mini LED TV stands out in many display technologies, to achieve penetration and sales continued growth, is also driven by economic and market factors.
However, from the perspective of technological development, MicroLED is the most advanced LED technology direction at present, in addition, laser display technology also attracts attention with unique advantages such as eye protection and large screen. Chen Jia said that the biggest problem in front of the panel industry is how to balance the Mini-LED production capacity to play the LCD production line waste heat, while the layout of more advanced MicroLED production capacity to cope with the future industrial chain technological innovation, the difficulty of solving far more than the panel market price fluctuations and high volume marketing strategy war
It can be seen that the current hot Mini LED will not change its transitional product status, Micro LED, laser display, etc. as the current more advanced display technology direction, the biggest blocking point that hindered its development before is the cost problem, but with the Mini LED into the high-speed popularization stage, TV and other display technology will be further innovated. Under the vigorous research and development of domestic and foreign manufacturers, a new generation of screen panels is expected to take the upper hand with leading display technology, and will also force a new revolution in the LED panel industry chain including color TV manufacturers.
Post time: Jul-24-2024