From the moment I entered the Central and West Halls at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, it became apparent that in addition to the plethora of TV displays and automotive solutions, this was the year of AI PCs and new gaming monitors.
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In media events held at the start of CES 2025, and in their main exhibit space, the top five global TV makers had very different approaches in their announcements about products. The two South Korean giants, Samsung and LG, focused on artificial intelligence (AI) while the upcoming Chinese competitors, Hisense and TCL, claimed the leadership of display technology in the TV space. Finally, Sony’s conference featured many connections with its content businesses. But all these TV makers described their strategic partnerships with US technology firms.
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As we have done each year since 2019, we have some predictions for the year.
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The central promotional event of the holiday season happened this week, and retailers offered all-time low prices for TVs during Black Friday. Although LCD TV panel prices are about the same today compared with a year ago, on some screen sizes the TV set prices are lower this year. This year we see much more promotion of the largest screen TVs, 98” or 100” LCD TVs. The competition from LCD is also pulling down OLED TV prices, which are also hitting all-time lows.
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Restrained production by major Chinese LCD makers has kept a lid on industry supply in the fourth quarter, and as a result LCD TV panel prices have stabilized. For the first time ever, in our outlook we expect prices for all panel sizes to be unchanged for at least four consecutive months.
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OLEDs found in smartphones, tablets, laptops, smartwatches and automotive applications are fabricated using a fine metal mask vacuum thermal evaporation (FMM VTE) tool. While Applied hasn’t disclosed pricing for their solution, FMM VTE tools can cost $500M each at G8.7 for 7.5K capacity for a tandem stack and the total FMM VTE expenditure for a 15K substrate per month tandem OLED fab can reach $1B. Equipment suppliers can only make and install a couple of these giant tools per year which can easily fill a football field, constraining the pace at which OLED manufacturers can build and expand capacity targeting future applications. In addition, the FMMs constrain OLED performance and limit the maximum size that can be produced. The ultra-thin fine metal masks are inherently constrained by sag, geometrical distortion and the tapered hole shape which results in a smaller OLED pixel and aperture ratio than if they were patterned by lithography. As the FMMs grow, the problem gets worse. With panel manufacturers looking to use larger substrates and build larger panels, FMMs can compromise this effort. In addition, the FMMs themselves are also expensive, take a long time to manufacture, need to be cleaned regularly, can lead to cross contamination impacting yields and require very precise positioning which impacts tool costs and can impact yields.
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DSCC discovered that that the new Apple M4 MacBook Pros are the company’s first products to use quantum dots. Although Apple has not revealed this publicly, DSCC has determined that these new MiniLED-based laptops use a quantum dot enhancement film through the use of a spectrometer. After posting this information on X and LinkedIn, we received additional confirmation of this fact from Apple employees and former Nanosys management. Former Nanosys President and CEO Jason Hartlove indicated that he couldn’t tell us before and was glad we figured it out, signaling that it was their quantum dots being used. He also commented that they first approached Apple 15 years ago.
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The election of Donald Trump as the 47th US President will force big changes in the supply chain for electronics products using displays if he follows through on campaign promises. Although there are signs that the display supply chain is slowly migrating to other regions, China remains the essential country for electronics imports to the US. If Trump follows through on his promise to implement a 60% tariff on imports from China, it will cost importers billions of dollars, likely forcing them to shift production to other countries.
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Last week, two of the smallest publicly traded flat panel display makers, Visionox and HannStar, released their financial reports for the third quarter of 2024. In this article we also add a review of Samsung Display’s results, adding to our analysis of Samsung Electronics last week.
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After a strong first half of 2024, Universal Display Corporation (UDC) reported a sequential increase in net profits but signaled a slowdown in materials sales that started near the end of the third quarter. The company now projects reduced material sales in the fourth quarter and has downwardly revised its full year revenue guidance. Investors punished the company after the call, pushing the company’s stock price down 11% in trading on Thursday. The company’s stock closed on Friday, November 1st at $180.25, down 3% year-to-date.
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