What They Say
Futuresource put out a forecast that the LED display market will grow to be worth $19.5 billion by 2026, a CAGR of 21%. The company said that the recovery of the market post-pandemic has been ‘remarkable’ after major disruption, especially to the events, rental and staging markets.
‘We can expect LED to surpass LCD and RPC within the decade,’ says Ted Romanowitz, Principal Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. ‘MicroLED will be an important part of that transition. Leaders in MicroLED technology have the capability of mass transferring sub-100-micron chiplets onto a TFT backplane with an active driver technology. Transitions such as these will drive the price down within ten years, to the point where a consumer TV with true MicroLED technology will be available for under three thousand dollars. It will cannibalise the LCD market.’
While SMD and IMD are expected to maintain a foothold through 2024, in the long term, MicroLED and MiniLED will prevail.
Another key outcome of these technology transitions will be LED’s emergence as the dominant video wall technology. Samsung’s The Wall is a prime example of an advanced MiniLED technology implementation.
With RPC continuing to decline, and LCD demonstrating sluggish growth, the market is facing an overhaul. These dramatic market shifts will see LED sales at nearly three times that of LCD within five years. Just like LCD and OLED today, LED production will increasingly fall into the hands of a few key players.
What We Think
Historically, Futuresource did not have a great reputation for forecasting – my own business was asked to enter the markets for forecast data and reports precisely because of the firm’s weakness. However, it is still useful to get the firm’s opinion on the trends in the market which it has been tacking for some time. Romanowitz seems to have more practical industry experience in LED than other analysts previously used by the firm. (BR)
