What They Say
DSCC put out its forecast for microLED TV technology which is conservative, based on the high costs of making TVs using the technology at the moment.
“It will be a huge challenge to compete, even in the premium TV category”
The costs scale with the number of pixels, so 8K will be even more challenged than 4K.
The report also included forecasts for AR/VR and wearables (where the technology will probably be more successful) as well as automotive.
What We Think
I wouldn’t disagree with this analysis. I still find plenty of people that don’t understand the key difference between OLED/LCD where, broadly, the cost is proportional to the area, while LED scales with the pixel count. As David Barnes used to say “For LCD, the pixels are free”. That is a key dynamic and there needs to be a genuine breakthrough to move microLED into the mainstream. However, there’s a lot of work going on to do this, for example at iBeam. (iBeam Gets Help to Be Disruptive from a Tech Giant) (BR)
