What They Say
Sigmaintell reported that sales of miniLED-based devices will be 3.92 million in 2021 and expects devices to reach 16 million by 2025, a CAGR of 42.1%, with TVs and tablets the key categories. TVs will hit 1.8 million this year, growing to 9 million. For IT applications, the volume will only be around 100K this year, but will get to two million. Tablets should grow from 2.1 million to more than five million.
Samsung & LG have been pioneers in miniLED TV, while Sony has had FALD for a number of years. Sigmaintell sees pricing slightly higher than OLED for comparable miniLED sets from Samsung and LG. TCL is the first Chinese brand with miniLED but others are following. The technology is expected to moved down to the medium-high segment of the market as costs decline because of better yield and lower material costs.
The firm expects active matrix miniLED BLUs to get into production this year and will narrow the cost gap with passive BLUs over the next five years.
IT applications of monitors and notebooks need a breakthrough. Monitor applications have either been in professional graphics applications or gaming. As with TV, a declining cost premium should allow increased penetration. In notebooks, the actions of Apple are likely to be important.
In tablets, Apple has the iPad Pro, but Sigmaintell expects more brands to enter the market with miniLED.
Over the period, miniLED products will compete hard with OLED, but the firm expects that when miniLED BLUs get to 1.5X the price of regular BLUs, demand and volume will rapidly increase.
What We Think
There is useful data in the graphics below, including tables of monitors and TVs with miniLED (BR)
