Whether Micro LED is incorporated into smartwatches, AR headsets, or smartphones, two major factors will determine the market competitiveness of this technology. The first factor involves lowering the costs of Micro LED chips. A notable solution to make the production of Micro LED chips much more economical is to enlarge the wafers that they are made from. Currently, the production lines for the mainstream Micro LED chips take in 6-inch wafers. Switching to 8-inch wafers will certainly result in a considerable cost reduction. The second factor is about flexibility. Micro LED has to work with different types of backplanes that contain glass, CMOS, etc. A reliable semiconductor manufacturing process is needed to serve as the basis for scaling up production. Such process is also critical for the provisioning of a total solution (i.e., from chip production to mass transfer, inspection, and repair).
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Among suppliers for LED chips, ams OSRAM has formed the tightest collaborative relationship with Apple in the field of Micro LED at this moment because it has advantages in addressing the two aforementioned factors. In the future, ams OSRAM will very likely become Apple’s key partner in supplying the Micro LED components that are embedded in next-generation displays.
Osram invested in a microLED manufacturing facility in Malaysia to build new 8″ wafers. That gets some of that work out of the Chinese supply chain no doubt helped by Apple investing its product line in the technology. The company has been a leading supplier to Apple since 2020 and it should lead to an overall rise in efficiency and pricing that will have a knock on effect with other customers and suppliers.
