Inventory of top ten keywords in the large-screen commercial display industry in 2022

Keyword 1: Second growth curve

2022, which is also full of challenges and opportunities, has also ushered in many new changes in the large-screen commercial display industry. This article will sort out the hot keywords in the industry this year.

There is no doubt that as an important category in the large-screen commercial display industry, the development of LED displays in my country has almost experienced a leapfrog development in the past ten years. Today, my country's LED light display industry can be said to remain the first camp in the world in terms of both technical level and market size.

However, the development of any industry must follow the basic laws of its development, and it is impossible to maintain a high-speed growth trend forever, which is the so-called law of volatility. This requires companies to maintain a forward-looking vision of being prepared for danger at all times, especially during periods of rapid development, that is, to look for a break point in the second growth curve before the limit point of the first growth curve currently experienced appears.

To find such a point, the critical time point should be when the current industry is developing, including when the company's performance is good, and when the industry has new opportunities for change. At this time, the company not only has sufficient strength and basic support, but also has a window to open up new markets. More importantly, it has the opportunity to explore and try and make mistakes.

So we saw that my country's LED screen companies have realized the importance of this exploration and have begun to carry out new explorations and layouts.

In recent years, outdoor naked-eye 3D has gradually become a new generation of urban landmarks. In response to the rapid growth of such projects, LED screen companies are actively strengthening the customization of segmented needs, while further strengthening the supporting software, especially the supporting production capabilities of creative content, forming a new business system of hardware + software + content + interaction.

In addition, we also noticed that XR virtual shooting technology is increasingly favored by virtual shooting scenes such as global film and television, and live broadcasts, which has also opened up a new huge market for the application of LED screens.

On the other hand, as many related companies have successively passed Hollywood DCI certification and launched related products, the commercial application of LED movie screens is just around the corner.

In addition, the promotion of LED TVs in the home field has also entered the practical stage of commercial application and offline promotion.

In this way, at a time when LED displays are facing opportunities in many new commercial application fields, LED screen companies are actively seizing this opportunity and opening up the second growth curve. This kind of exploration for new applications will also become the focus of manufacturers in the future.

Keyword 2: soft nuclear power

Once upon a time, brand competition in the large-screen commercial display industry was mainly concentrated on the product hardware level. Later, it began to shift towards solutions, but it was still difficult to break away from the core essence of hardware supply. However, in recent years, the business thinking of relevant companies has begun to break the inherent hardware dimension and shift their focus to soft power.

Take Zhou Ming, a representative brand of this strategy, as an example. As early as the 2021 InfoComm exhibition, Zhou Ming was the first in the industry to release a new concept of software-defined large screens. It is also worth noting that its definition of the enterprise itself has also changed into an Internet of Things enterprise. This change in turn triggered an upsurge in the industry's active exploration in the direction of the Internet of Things.

It is not difficult to find that in the process of Zhouming's IoT transformation, the key change is that the company's core competitive strength is gradually transforming from a pure hardware model to a hard-display + soft-control model. For example, in the company's outdoor naked-eye 3D project, what is supplied to the client is no longer simply hardware and basic display control, but a three-in-one one-stop solution of hardware + software + content. Among them, the importance and value of creative content are gradually changing from supporting roles to leading roles.

As a result, the entire large-screen commercial display industry has regarded expanding and strengthening soft power as one of the important basic strategies at present and in the future. Soft power has also become one of the key words to measure the core competitive strength of large-screen enterprises.

The reason is that on the one hand, the large-screen commercial display industry has developed to a relatively mature stage, and the homogenization problem of hardware competition has become prominent. Enterprises are in urgent need of new competitiveness that can form their own characteristics and advantages. On the other hand, it stems from the market demand side, including the new demand for digital content in traditional industries and emerging fields. Under the combined effect of various factors, building a company's soft power can not only help the company form an exclusive selling point that is different from its competitors, but more importantly, it can open up new profit spaces, especially in the market where the tide of digitalization continues to advance. In the context of the market, the sustained profitability of soft power is far beyond the one-time profit hardware model.

Keyword 3: Yuan infrastructure

In 2021, the concept of the metaverse will explode the entire scientific and technological community. Until 2022, the opportunities created by this concept will remain a hot topic in the entire scientific and technological community, including the large-screen commercial display industry. However, it is worth noting that in the large-screen commercial display industry circle, the discussion on this concept has begun to move more from a purely conceptual level to a practical level of how to implement it.

There is currently no unified answer in the industry as to what opportunities the metaverse can bring to the large-screen commercial display industry. However, it is worth noting that in the early stages of the rapid development and popularization of revolutionary new technologies such as big data, cloud storage, and 5G communications, as well as quantum science such as AI, blockchain, and digital twins, digitalization has begun to empower many traditional industries. Empowering, and these new application scenarios are precisely new business opportunities in the large-screen commercial display industry.

Specific to the large-screen commercial display industry, the current trend application closest to the metaverse interface is probably the new application created by metaverse + new infrastructure, which can also be referred to as meta-infrastructure for short. Simply put, it focuses on the construction of digital scenes under the digital economy, which is also the focus of attention of large-screen commercial display companies, including many LED screen companies.

In recent years, many places have successively issued a number of relevant construction plans related to the metaverse industry, including many topics related to the digital transformation of cities, and even explicitly mentioned accelerating the development and application of micro organic light-emitting displays (Micro oled) and micro light-emitting displays (Micro LED).

Looking at the current large-screen commercial display industry, the leading LED screen enterprise camp is also actively broadening the development boundaries beyond traditional display companies while continuing to promote the development process of LED display technology. Through the perfect layout of more horizontal technical systems, we will explore the more competitive development model of large-screen enterprises in the new era of the metaverse.

For example, new application scenarios XR virtual shooting, outdoor naked-eye 3D, etc., which have been extremely popular in recent years, are showing higher-quality three-dimensional, immersive, interactive, and scene-based characteristics. Among them, the projects involve XR technology, 3D content production, dynamic capture and other technologies, which are becoming standard standards for large-screen companies to build their competitive strength in corporate independence solutions.

It can be seen that for large-screen commercial display enterprises, this new infrastructure demand for the metaverse stimulated by digital application scenarios has initially formed initial products and business models, and is still in the process of accelerating evolution.

Keyword 4: ecological consortium

As the industry's development gradually enters a new stage, the large-screen commercial display industry, especially the LED display industry, has experienced an opportunity period for new technologies and new outlets, which has brought more to the future industry's technical route selection and brand structure. More variables. In this ever-changing industry background, related companies have also carried out active adjustments to their business strategic layout.

Faced with the complex technology and brand landscape, the blooming market determines that it is increasingly difficult for a company to dominate. On the other hand, the demand from the underlying market is increasingly diversified and refined driven by technological trends such as digitalization. Professional people do professional things, so LED screen companies have launched a strategic layout of combining vertical and horizontal.

Let's first look at a few facts. In April 2022, Birdie Technology completed Series B financing, with a total financing amount of several hundred million yuan. Investors include Liard and Alto Electronics.

On August 8, 2022, Guangdong Meishi Technology Co., Ltd., a company invested by Zhouming Technology Industry Fund, was successfully listed on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

In this wave of operations, LED screen companies actively established investment binding relationships with signal processing companies, which can be regarded as a powerful supplement to their own signal processing capabilities and can be regarded as a typical example of horizontal cooperation.

On the other hand, LED screen companies are also actively approaching and integrating upstream industries. For example, Liard has a joint venture with Jingyuan Optoelectronics to lay out the production of Mini LED and Micro LED chips and modules. AET actively expands cooperation with industry ecosystems. In recent years, many screen companies have actively carried out overseas mergers and acquisitions, targeting relevant chip research and development companies, institutions, etc. This series of measures traced back up the industrial chain can be regarded as a representative of the combination.

The formation of a positive cooperative mentality about this wave of vertical and horizontal cooperation is inseparable from the phased development of the industry. Currently, the general view in the industry is that the next generation of technological innovation for LED displays will mainly focus on Mini LEDs and Micro LEDs (referred to as MLED). The all-size feature of MLED technology is destined to not only change the technical route of the industry, but also open up more possibilities on the application side, and new blue oceans in the market will emerge in large numbers.

This means that not only for traditional applications, there will be geometric growth in demand for LED chips, but also for many emerging markets, there will be huge production capacity needs. Obviously, if you do not want to be limited in the upcoming era of MLED display, you must strengthen the upstream layout now. This is not only a measure to accelerate the commercial application of MLED, but also a new business format emerging in the industry under the awareness of preventing stuck neck crises.

In short, whether it is a joint vertical or a joint horizontal, LED screen companies are actively strengthening industry cooperation, establishing their own industry ecosystem, and strengthening the comprehensive competitive strength of their own ecological camps. This will also become one of the main themes of the future industry.

Keyword 5: Core breakthrough

While actively deploying the application side, LED screen companies are also continuing to push up the ceiling of technology research and development. The focus of research and development on MLED technology in 2022 will mainly focus on new breakthroughs at the chip level.

In recent years, regarding the research and development of MLED technology, breakthroughs in new materials have been a focus, typically such as research on gallium nitride materials that directly emit red light.

It is understood that currently RGB Among the three primary colors of LEDs, blue and green chips have achieved direct light emission from third-generation semiconductor gallium nitride materials, while red chips are still in the second-generation semiconductor gallium arsenide materials. Such a material combination system reflects the industry pain point of mismatch and insufficient luminous efficiency of red LEDs.

Therefore, the research and development and breakthrough of red gallium nitride will become a hot spot in the industry in 2022. It is understood that AET Altai has successfully lit up the Mini LED gallium nitride red light chip within the year. The company's gallium nitride direct red light emission project directly emits red light through gallium nitride, which has achieved an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 620 wavelengths and is expected to further achieve an external quantum efficiency of 20% in the future, which is better than existing gallium arsenide Red chips achieve higher efficiency and help promote the development of new display industries based on nitride Micro LED technology.

In addition, the industry's first display using quantum dot Micro LED chips jointly developed by Liard and Saphlux was also released during the year.

Severus 'NPQD technology refers to Quantum Dot chip integration technology based on Nanopore structures. It uses gallium nitride combined with red quantum dots for color conversion, circumventing this material limitation. Moreover, the nanopore structure has a unique scattering effect, which can increase the effective optical path by 8 times, increase the light exit area by 40 times, achieve a light conversion efficiency of 99.99% within a quantum dot thickness of 5 microns, and enhance the reliability of the quantum dot. This major technological breakthrough will comprehensively accelerate the commercialization of Micro LED display technology.

No matter what technical route is adopted, the industry's basic research and development and breakthrough results at the LED chip level since 2022 will help further accelerate the maturity and commercial application of MLED technology.

Keyword 6: Huge transfer and localization

As the focus of the new generation of LED display technology, Micro LEDs rely on their characteristics such as self-luminescence, high efficiency, low power consumption, and high stability, as well as their advantages in terms of high resolution, high brightness, high color saturation, low latency, and long life., are considered to have wide adaptability from consumer electronics to large-scale video wall applications, and have promising prospects.

However, at this stage, Micro LEDs still face some technical bottlenecks, which have also brought problems such as difficulties in increasing production capacity and high product prices, which have become constraints on the commercial application of Micro LEDs. Among them, the huge transfer of technology is the key. At present, a large amount of transfer equipment is generally imported, which not only leads to high costs, but also brings the hidden danger of stuck necks.

Therefore, in recent years, my country's enterprises have actively explored the localization of huge amounts of transferred technologies and achieved certain results in 2022.

For example, Han's Laser stated on the investment interactive platform that its Micro LED massive transfer equipment was independently developed by the company and has now been sold.

Pioneer Intelligence said that the company's independently developed Micro LED laser massive transfer equipment has been successfully shipped and entered the process verification stage. As a result, the company has become one of the only few advanced equipment in China that has achieved massive transfer.

Haimu Laser also announced that its first batch of Micro LED massive transfer equipment has been successfully shipped and delivered to customers.

For the domestic Micro LED industry, localization of equipment is only the first step to solve the localization of equipment in the entire industry chain. The next problem to be solved is accuracy.

It is understood that the ideal mass transfer equipment standard for Micro LED production is that the transfer yield reaches 99.9999%(commonly known as the six nines), and the accuracy of each chip must be controlled within 0.5 m.

According to reports, the pilot laser massive transfer equipment has unique advantages in terms of transfer yield and reliability. It has been verified that the huge transfer yield of this equipment can reach 99.99%, and the transfer accuracy can reach less than 1 m.

At present, 2022 can be regarded as a new year for the full localization of a large amount of transferred equipment. On the premise of initially realizing mass production of equipment, we need to continue to do our homework in terms of transfer accuracy and cost reduction. This also makes us look forward to new breakthroughs and new progress in 2023.

Keywords 7: MIP integrated packaging technology

As mentioned above, a huge amount of transfer process is the key to solving the production capacity and cost problems of Micro LED, and transfer yield is the key core issue. This has also led in recent years, related companies to actively invest in research and development to improve yield processes. Among them, MIP integrated packaging technology can be regarded as a hot spot in this field in 2022.

MIP (Micro LED in Package) packaging technology is a new packaging architecture based on Micro LEDs. It is born out of small-pitch display products and can be described as Micro.