TrendForce will host the “LED Forum 2023” on September 5th at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Conference Center. The event will showcase presentations from TrendForce’s Senior Research Vice President, Eric Chiou, and representatives from various companies and institutes, including Mojo Vision, ITRI, Lumus, and others. Majorly focus on the advancements in Micro LED technology and its applications.

This event will host the Micro LED Forum on September 5th. The forum will cover key topics including Metaverse trends, Micro LED technology advancements and innovative applications. Industry experts will share market insights, company progress updates, and notable technological breakthroughs in 2023.

【Information】

• Date: September 5^th, 2023
• Time: 09:30~17:00（Registration starts at 8:45）
• Location: Room 401, NTUH International Convention Center
• Website：https://seminar.trendforce.com/LEDforum/2023/TW/index/

The demand situation of the global car market deteriorated in 2022 due to the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine military conflict and the ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks across China. However, the demand for automotive lighting products during the same year was propped up by two developments. First, the penetration rate of LED headlights (headlamps) rose further. Second, there were significant advances in technologies related to smart headlights, marker lights (lamps), and smart ambient lights.

Furthermore, costs surged for plastics during 2022, so suppliers for automotive lighting products had the opportunity to keep their prices steady or raise them. Hence, TrendForce estimates that the value of the global market for automotive lighting products has come to US$32.68 billion for 2022, reflecting a YoY growth of 4%.

Looking ahead, development trends in the automotive lighting market include personalized products, communication displays, solutions for ADAS, and improvements related to safety functions. TrendForce currently forecasts that the market value will scale up to US$34.314 billion for 2023, showing a YoY growth of 5%.

In addition to improvements in adaptive headlights and tail lights (lamps), TrendForce points to several other product categories that have gained greater importance and captured the attention of carmakers, automotive lighting suppliers, LED suppliers, and drive IC suppliers. Examples include marker lights, (smart) ambient lights, and solutions for light-signaling projection. The aforementioned market participants have been proactively developing offerings under these categories. Going forward, carmakers will continue to bring surprising and innovative ideas to the development of automotive lighting. This, in conjunction with the promotion of ADAS and automotive driving technologies, will create limitless market potential for automotive lighting suppliers.

According to TrendForce’s “Global LED Industry Data Base and LED Player Movement Quarterly Update” report, demand for high-standard LED products in the lighting market will enter a growth stage. Generally speaking, the price of lighting LED products is stable. However, due to the recent rise in global raw material prices, the unit price of products looks to trend higher. Coupled with high demand for energy conservation from governments around the world, the output value of the lighting LED market in 2022 is forecast to have an opportunity to reach US$8.11 billion, or 9.2% growth YoY. In the next few years, the scale of the lighting LED market will continue growing due to the promotion of human centric lighting (HCL), smart lighting, and other factors and is expected to reach US$11.1 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.4% from 2021 to 2026.

TrendForce further states, despite the continuing impact of the pandemic in 2022, the pervasiveness of vaccines and the recovery of economic activities coupled with the rigid demand associated with the lighting market as a daily necessity, global “carbon neutrality,” and the growing requirements of the energy conservation agenda, have moved numerous major powers to realize net-zero emissions through measures such as energy efficiency and low-carbon heating in recent years. However, lighting is a leading energy consumer in buildings, accounting for 20% to 30% of total building energy consumption. LED penetration will deepen, driven by the high demand for energy conservation and policies and regulations requiring the upgrade of aging equipment. In addition, smart lighting can also achieve the purpose of timely energy conservation. Therefore, there is strong demand for the introduction of LED lighting and smart lighting upgrades in commercial lighting, residential lighting, outdoor lighting, and industrial lighting, which further drives demand for high-standard LED products including high light efficiency, high color rendering and color saturation, low blue light HCL and smart lighting devices.

The gradual recovery of the lighting market is clearly reflected in the 2021 manufacturer revenue rankings. Lighting LED manufacturers including Samsung LED, ams OSRAM, CREE LED, Lumileds, Seoul Semiconductor, MLS, and Lightning have all posted revenue growth. MLS is still the leading manufacturer of lighting LEDs, ranking first in revenue, with an annual revenue growth rate of 34% in 2021. ams OSRAM, Lumileds, CREE LED, and Samsung LED primarily took advantage of orders for industrial, outdoor, and horticultural lighting last year, posting annual revenue growth of 26%, 18%, and 8%, respectively.

In terms of pricing, as demand in the lighting industry gradually recovered in 2021, facing demand for higher specification terminal application products and the impact of rising overall costs in raw materials and operations, LED packaging factories no longer adopted pricing strategies to capture additional market share, allowing lighting LED product pricing to stabilize and rebound in 2021. In terms of product categories, the average market price of medium and low-power lighting LED products (less than 1 watt, excluding 1 watt) such as 2835 LED, 3030 LED, and 5630 LED, posted an annual growth rate of 2.1~4.4%. For high-power lighting LED products (above 1 watt) such as ceramic substrate LEDs and 7070 LEDs, average annual market price growth was as much as 3.0~6.0%. TrendForce expects lighting LED pricing to further stabilize in 1H22.

During Apple’s Spring Loaded event, the Cupertino company announced the upcoming release of its latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro models featuring Mini LED display technology. According to TrendForce’s latest investigations, demand for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro has already been relatively high in the niche markets.

Thus, given the thorough improvement in specs as well as the very slight price hike of merely $100 over the previous generation, TrendForce is not only revising up its shipment forecast for the 2021 version of the 12-inch iPad Pro from four million units to five million units this year, but also expecting this product to account for a 3.1% share in the global tablet market, compared to the previous forecast of 2.5%.

TrendForce analyst Max Chen indicates three key areas of observation with respect to Apple’s latest flagship tablet: technology cost, retail price, and product spec. First, in terms of technology cost, the Mini LED backlight used in the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro costs about US$85 more than the traditional edge-lit LED backlight used in the previous generation.

Second, in terms of retail price, the entry-level 128GB model of the 12.9-inch Mini LED iPad Pro retails for $1,099, which is only $100 higher than the equivalent model of the previous generation. As such, the price hike in the latest model is, for the most part, a result of the increased cost of Mini LED backlights, rather than wholly being an attempt at driving up profit margins. The modest price hike is therefore an indication of Apple’s desire to become the gold standard in the tablet market by adopting Mini LED backlight technology.

Finally, in terms of product spec, the latest 12.9-inch Mini LED iPad Pro is equipped with Apple’s high-end Liquid Retina XDR technology, which gives the tablet a max full-screen brightness of 1,000 nits, peak brightness of 1,600 nits, and contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, with the peak brightness and contrast ratio both being firsts in the tablet industry.

Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the latest tablet is equipped with 10,384 Mini LED chips, divided into 2,596 dimming zones, giving it additional high contrast and high color saturation performance that is superior to the 31.5-inch iMac, which features 512 backlight dimming zones and is the first product to feature Apple’s XDR display technology.

With regards to Apple’s plans for 2H21, the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook models will likewise feature Mini LED backlight technology, which will become the hardware benchmark for high-end tablets and notebook computers. The release of Apple’s Mini LED-equipped tablets is expected to galvanize a growth against market headwinds for upstream and downstream companies in the Mini LED supply chain, including Mini LED chip suppliers (e.g., Ennostar), testing and sorting service suppliers (e.g., FitTech, Saultech, and YTEC), SMT suppliers (e.g., TSMT and Yenrich), backplane PCB suppliers (e.g., Zhen Ding Tech and Tripod Technology), driver IC suppliers (e.g., Parade, Novatek, and Macroblock), and light source module suppliers (e.g., Radiant/ROE and GIS).

(Cover image source: Apple.com)

For more information on reports and market data from TrendForce’s Department of Optoelectronics Research, please click here, or email Ms. Grace Li from the Sales Department at graceli@trendforce.com

The LED video wall driver IC market has been suffering from insufficient production capacities on the supply side since 2020, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. In order to ensure a sufficient level of wafer capacities at foundries, LED video wall driver IC suppliers therefore began raising prices for certain driver IC products by about 5-10% at the end of last year, and this price hike is expected to persist through 2021 as well.

On the demand side, various commercial activities and sporting events have been successively resuming as the COVID-19 pandemic is gradually brought under control. The resumption of these activities is expected to drive global LED video wall driver IC revenue for 2021 to US$360 million, a 13% growth YoY.

Chipone takes leadership position among suppliers in the highly oligopolistic LED video wall driver IC market

TrendForce indicates that that the LED video wall driver IC market is highly oligopolistic, as the top five suppliers collectively possessed more than 90% market share by revenue last year. With regards to the performances of the individual suppliers, Chipone took leadership position with a 36% share in the LED video wall driver IC market and dwarfed the other suppliers in terms of both revenue and shipment. On the other hand, Taiwan-based Macroblock, which primarily focuses on the high-end segment and holds relatively advanced technologies in its portfolio, took second place with a 20% market share.

Sunmoon took third place last year with a 13% market share. The company went public in December in an effort to raise more capital and strengthen its market position. Sunmoon has since become listed on China’s SSE STAR Market as a public company. Rounding out the top five list are Fine Made and Shixin Technology, which took fourth and fifth place, respectively. These two companies, along with others such as Developer Microelectronics, Sumacro, MY-Semi, and Xm-Plus, together constituted a 31% market share.

Tight 8-inch wafer capacities have led to noticeable price hikes for entry-level LED video wall driver ICs

Although the foundry industry expanded its 8-inch wafer capacities in 2021, driver IC demand for applications such as 5G smartphones, 5G base stations, automotive power devices, PMICs, and large-sized panel driver ICs remains strong. Incidentally, wafer capacities for driver ICs used in these aforementioned applications overlap with wafer capacities for LED video wall driver ICs to an extensive degree. At the same time, as small pixel pitch and ultra-fine pitch displays (LED video walls) become the market mainstream, LED video wall driver IC demand will likely undergo a corresponding growth as well.

However, in 2021, production capacities for LED video wall driver ICs will continue to be constrained by the demand for other products due to their low profitability. As a result, TrendForce expects prices of high-end LED video wall driver ICs to once again undergo a 5-10% increase in 2Q21, while entry-level ones will undergo a price hike of about 20-30% for the same period.

For more information on reports and market data from TrendForce’s Department of Optoelectronics Research, please click here, or email Ms. Grace Li from the Sales Department at graceli@trendforce.com