New display industry upgrade competition, TCL Huaxing shines

In the past two years, the global panel industry has entered a period of adjustment, and the industry has experienced a major reshuffle. As Japanese and Korean manufacturers have successively reduced production and withdrawn from the historical stage, and Taiwanese manufacturers have reduced production and cleared out old production lines, the current panel industry is dominated by mainland China, and industry concentration continues to increase. At the same time, the global display industry is bursting with new vitality. Panel manufacturers may move to new display tracks such as OLED and MLED, aiming to occupy the commanding heights in new fields and build new barriers; or they may seek second growth points across industries, aiming to promote the optimization and upgrading of business structure through multiple growth engines, and achieve high-quality development with high value-added technologies and products.

From the perspective of mainland Chinese enterprises, panel manufacturers such as TCL CSOT and BOE have in recent years actively promoted the parallel strategy of multiple technology routes such as OLED and MLED on the basis of consolidating and strengthening their market position in LCD panels, waiting for opportunities to overtake.

Represented by TCL Huaxing, the company pursues a diversified technology route strategy represented by HVA/HFS/IPS/IJP OLED/FMM OLED/MLCD/MLED. Among them, IJP OLED (printed OLED) is one of its most focused technology lines at the moment. Facing the escalating competition in the new display industry, TCL CSOT is building a complete industrial chain ecosystem through continuous technological innovation, using the brand as a guide, accelerating the transformation of technology research and development results, and promoting products to accelerate penetration into the consumer market.

Powered by technological innovation, TCL CSOT printed OLED defines the future of display

In recent years, with the maturity of technology and the decline of prices, the penetration rate of OLED in the small and medium-sized fields has continued to increase, and it has shown strong growth momentum. It is the technical direction that panel manufacturers are currently focusing on.

According to TrendForce's "AMOLED Market and Technology Trend Report", the penetration rate of OLED in the MNT field is expected to increase from 0.4% in 2023 to 4.4% in 2028, and the penetration rate in the NB field is expected to increase from 2.1% in 2023 to 11.5% in 2028.

TCL Huaxing recently stated in a media group interview that the penetration rate of OLED in medium-sized products is continuously increasing, and medium-sized applications will provide huge industrial-level opportunities for OLEDs. In the next three to five years, TCL Huaxing expects that the penetration rate of OLED in medium-sized fields such as NB notebooks, Pad tablets, MNT displays, and automobiles will maintain rapid growth. In TCL Huaxing’s view, this may be a very obvious industry-level opportunity or trend in the display industry in the next five years. Therefore, TCL Huaxing strives to grasp industry trends and accelerate the completion of its technical layout in OLED.

In terms of OLED technology, TCL Huaxing advocates "two legs" in parallel, that is, traditional evaporated OLED (FMM OLED) + printed OLED. It implements a high-end and differentiated strategy to avoid homogeneous competition. At present, FMM OLED technology mainly uses t4's 6th generation line evaporation OLED to upgrade corresponding products and technologies. The layout direction focuses on mid-to-high-end mobile phones, high-end and flagship laptops and tablet applications. At the same time, for mainstream medium-sized OLED products, TCL Huaxing is laying out its layout with printed OLED technology as its core.

Printed OLED technology is an inkjet printing technology that uses three primary colored light-emitting semiconductor materials as inkjet materials. Ink droplets are ejected through nozzles onto designated positions on the substrate for direct patterning. The material utilization rate is about 90% and is not limited by equipment and large-size fine metal masks.

According to TCL Huaxing, printed OLED technology has multiple obvious advantages in display, health and green aspects. Compared with the traditional FMM process, the overall cost is reduced by 20%, making it a more cost-effective choice. At the same time, because the pixel arrangement adopts the RealRGB method, the text display edges are clear and sharp, and there is no color crosstalk, which can provide a better display effect. In addition, this technology has a relatively high opening rate and obvious advantages in product life.

Simply put, printed OLED technology meets the multi-dimensional needs of future displays and is expected to lead a new round of display revolution and create new opportunities for the display industry. However, taking into account the maturity of the technology and the needs of the mid-size market in terms of cost and performance, TCL CSOT believes that mid-size will be the first step in the commercialization of printed OLED technology.

However, due to factors such as large initial investment and technological maturity, there are currently few players in this track. As a lone player in this track, TCL Huaxing will be the first to reap the dividends brought by the commercialization of printed OLED.

It is understood that in the process of insisting on technological innovation for more than ten years, TCL CSOT finally overcame all difficulties and accumulated accumulated experience to officially mass-produce medical printed OLED display screens in Q4 of 2024, creating the first global display new technology led by a Chinese company to enter commercial use. Currently, TCL Huaxing ranks first in the world in total number of patents in the field of printed OLED.

However, the medical field is a subdivided professional field, with small quantities and high prices. Looking forward to the future, TCL Huaxing’s goal is a larger consumer market. Therefore, TCL CSOT is accelerating the mass production of printed OLED consumer products and will promote it on a quarterly basis.

During this SID Display Week, TCL CSOT's portable printed OLED family bucket was unveiled. The products cover 6.5-inch mobile phone displays to 65-inch TV displays, fully demonstrating that TCL CSOT has the mass production capabilities of printed OLED technology.

Generally speaking, at the technical level, TCL Huaxing is fully prepared. In terms of production capacity, the existing production capacity of TCL CSOT Wuhan's 5.5-generation printed OLED display panel production line can meet the current demand for high-end notebook computers. At the level of industrial ecological construction, TCL Huaxing also has a clear layout.

It is reported that TCL Huaxing has launched close cooperation with its upstream and downstream partners. In terms of process and equipment, TCL Huaxing has achieved better display effects through process and equipment optimization. In terms of materials, in addition to the polymer materials currently in use, TCL CSOT plans to cooperate with upstream material partners to share, co-create, and co-research the entire material system (including small molecule luminescent materials, and other printed OLED-related materials). At the same time, TCL CSOT will also work with terminal manufacturers to promote printed OLED products to become the most mainstream products in the market.

Based on market performance, OLED is expected to achieve a qualitative leap in the market size of the medium-sized field in the future, and TCL Huaxing has shown the trump card of "printed OLED", which is expected to concentrate more resources, gain greater initiative in the OLED market and even the entire display field, and occupy more market share.

The APEX Zhentu brand serves as a guide to promote the penetration of new display technologies into the consumer market

In the new display era, the rules of the game have changed, and now brands and channels are king. Among them, brand is very important to both the supply chain and the consumer market. In the consumer market, users often look at brands when purchasing things, especially high-value products. For the supply chain, brand building can not only guide the internal technical route or business layout, but also weaken consumers' cognitive barriers to professional technical parameters and quickly enter the consumer market.

Based on its understanding of user needs and social value, TCL CSOT officially launched APEX Zhentu, an advanced display technology brand, in 2024. Guided by the APEX Zhentu brand, it has comprehensively laid out seven major technical routes.

The APEX Zhentu brand integrates the four dimensions of display experience, visual health, green and low-carbon, and future imagination. It meets the market's pursuit of high-definition displays, healthy eye protection, energy conservation and environmental protection, and also provides users with room for imagination for future displays.

At this SID exhibition, the ultra-large 36:9 MLED display (219") has a million-level contrast ratio and highly restores vivid true colors, which is a typical representative of "high image quality"; the world's first natural-spectrum thin and light flat panel display (12.1") reflects TCL CSOT's ultimate pursuit of visual health; and the world's first oxide printed OLED laptop display (14") perfectly fits the concept of green environmental protection. In addition, the world's smallest silicon-based Micro The LED display (0.05") has an ultra-high resolution of 5080 pixels per inch (PPI), and the transparent Micro LED display (8.42"), combined with technologies such as floating touch, camera image recognition and AI analysis, provides users with unlimited space for imagination.

As Liu Xiaolan, vice president of TCL Huaxing, said, TCL Huaxing launched the APEX Zhentu brand from the perspective of users’ essential needs and social value. All the company’s products are developed based on the APEX Zhentu brand value concept. In the future, the APEX Zhentu brand can serve as a "guidance" for consumers in choosing new display products and promote the accelerated penetration of new display technologies into the consumer market. From a higher industrial value perspective, TCL Huaxing will rely on the APEX Zhentu brand to empower the sustainable and healthy development of the entire industry.

Conclusion

Whether it is LCD, MLED, or OLED, they will all coexist in the future, and all major technology routes are expected to shine in suitable application fields. But for manufacturers with multiple technical routes running in parallel, how to balance the development of major technical routes is a key issue. In this regard, TCL Huaxing has a clear technical positioning.

Taking into account factors such as technological maturity, price/performance, and market demand, TCL CSOT believes that LCD will remain the mainstream technology route in the large-size field in the long term, and the company will continue to achieve the ultimate picture quality for large-size TVs in the LCD field. At the same time, TCL Huaxing will initially position printed OLED in the mid-size application market, aiming to achieve the ultimate in mid-size capabilities, cost and technology. In addition, MLED is also one of the technologies that TCL Huaxing has invested heavily in. It has built a complete industrial chain ecosystem in this field and is accelerating the industrialization of Micro LED-related products.