If you want to know why I can write my projections for 2025 it is because I am as unqualified as anyone else to predict the future, but it’s always fun to tempt the fates. So, here goes.
2025 is going to be the year when one of our dollar multi-billionaires is going to become a trillionaire. The good thing about these uber-wealthy folks is that all they want is to make the world a better place, give everyone jobs because low taxes and no regulations will make it easier for them to hire more people to do more things. It’s that simple. They have proven their munificence time and time again by refusing to instigate layoffs and reducing corporate share buybacks, and stopping offshoring to low-cost labor markets. That is why I would be happy to marry any of them and be there to hold their hands and dry their tears of joys as they save the world from itself. I am a Virgo and after March, Jupiter will be in my ninth house and I am pretty sure that will bag me a rich guy. I have sent it out to the universe and it is coming back to me.
That last paragraph has nothing to do with displays, but I promise to buy a $150,000 MicroLED television once my beau gives me a Black AmEx card. And if I get my robot augmentation, I will use some decent LEDs to give my eyes a sparkle.
2025 will definitely be the year of AI. For better or for worse. Will this have anything to do with displays? Probably enough to drive the price of hardware up and make it easier to increase the bill of materials for the average laptop and drop an OLED screen in there. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use ChatGPT or hasn’t tried it. I don’t know that many who pay a monthy retainer to be a made a fool by it, but it’s hard for people to grasp the opportunity with so much hype surrounding it.
One area that AI truly helps the display industry is in the TV market. AI processing is going to make MiniLED backplane TVs even better performers against OLED TVs, and I know that I am never going to pay the extra cost of an OLED TV when you can walk into a Best Buy and find better priced, and brighter MiniLED TVs. Even the sales associates know this, at least in my experience. I am sure that is going to tick off all those people doing research on making display technology better, but TVs have reached a point of being good enough, and the only thing that anyone wants is bigger ones at the lowest price possible.
75-inches is the new 55-inches in TV land, and no one wants to pay any more than they have to get that big a picture. And if can hang on a wall, no one really cares how much thinner an OLED TV is compared to a MiniLED. I mean, some people are, but they probably don’t have your grandma’s quilts hanging over their furniture so you don’t stain the couch.
I did use AI to learn about tariffs. And I did a non-scientific, bored of family-time, analysis of all the articles about tariffs in the new age of Trump. Looks like the guy who has always bullied people is thinking tariffs are going to be bullying tools against the rest of the world if they don’t what he wants. It ain’t going to hurt the display business. No one in Europe or North America is going to be making TVs and monitors any time soon, and even if they tried, I’d love to know where they are going to stuff those factories. I reckon our Bully-in-Chief won’t be too happy if there are not enough big screens to watch him for the next four years so, I am going to predict that 2025 will the be the year of 75-inch TV sales in all the red states. None of that tariff fear-mongering or pontificating here.
My cousin Bob married a German, moved to Hamburg. I wen to visit him and he has a pretty good life, nice house, and all that, but back in Florida, he had a house that could easily fit a 75-inch screen. In Germany, he can barely fit his 75-inch family car in the driveway. The good old US of A has lots of space for big screens. It has lots of appetite, and anyone who thinks the next four years is going to be a march towards utopia is going to be watching college or NFL football and wanting big screens. So, yeah, the big TV renaissance is coming but not for OLED TVs.
I know, going on a limb for TCL or Hisense seems like a stretch, and the boss told me I would get flak for it, but hey, I know my people. They are all thinking that their taxes are dropping, manufacturing is coming to their local boarded up industries, and they are going to celebrate the only way they know how, big TVs, barbecues, beer, and coronary disease. At least in my family, and trust me, there’s a lot of them. We breed like rabbits.
Happy New Year, folks! Relax, 2025 is going to be great for the display industry. And Virgos.
