Apple Reportedly Investing Over $300M in New Taiwanese Factory to Produce Mini-LED and Micro-LED Displays

[sublunar]

Unless you are talking about panel sizes of 60" and more, that hasn't been true for years. There is a premium compared to LCDs, but the prices are far from "prohibitive".

Just because an OLED TV has a HDMI port in it and you could plug a PC into it doesn't make it a good computer monitor.

Can you name a 'far from prohibitively' priced OLED computer monitor please?

To save you some time I'll name two OLED monitors for you. Dell UltraSharp UP3017UQ - on launch it cost $3499 and Dell don't seem to sell it any more. Do you want to see an iMac (not even a Pro) start at $5k with i5 and a hard drive in it?

Want one that you can buy now? Alienware AW5520QF - on the Dell UK store it's on sale for £2799. Yeah it's 55 inch and marketed for gamers, but where is the HDR mode?

Too big? OK, Asus PQ22U, a 4k 21.5" display, right? Lovely. Factory calibrated, HDR, 99% of DCI-P3 gamut, and very close to professional grade displays if you only looked at sections of the screen. But the brightness isn't that great on this one - however, crank up the brightness and the burn in chance increases. How much? $4k - or almost £3,900 on Amazon UK. Yeah, I don't see Apple putting that panel into the iMac 21.5"...

I've seen smaller laptop sized panels but read the reviews - tell me how long till you reach the comments about burn-in.

You'll have to look at the definition of prohibitive from a consumer point of view. Imagine the outcry if an OLED iMac screen burns in after 3 years when the rest of the computer could do service for 10? And they've had to pay hundreds (thousands) of extra dollars for the screen? Look at the number of OLED monitors on the market and the cost of them.

Apple aim for a price point and obviously decided that OLED fits the profile for phones and watches and would be unwilling to apply that premium to a computer. Imagine the utter outcry from certain Macrumors denizens if the next iMac came at a $2500 base cost because of an OLED screen despite Apple using power.

Prices are coming down, LCD panels are becoming commodity and it's easy to see why Apple are getting off that particular horse and getting on a more valuable quality proposition - and that proposition is Mini LED and not OLED for iMacs.

You did notice that Apple uses OLEDs in their top-of-the-line iPhones and Apple Watches, didn't you?

Perhaps I needed to clarify the statement to mean monitors for Macs and MacBooks. And OLED may be an acceptable stepping stone for phones and watches that won't last a decade and aren't 'on' for hours - showing a static screen all day. That's the difference that makes OLED acceptable for phones and watches.

Note that iPads have stayed LCD and will be going direct to mini LED rather than ever getting OLED.

OLED colour reproduction may be superior but I doubt the people (like myself) who keep their Macs for the best part of a decade (or indeed the people who buy used machines) would be impressed with OLED panels after any appreciable length of time and used values would plummet even if the machine was in otherwise perfect condition.

 

[iStorm]

All these display rumors seem to be pretty consistent - the 11-inch iPad Pro NEVER gets mentioned. What's up with that?

 

[dazz87]

OLED iphones gives me a headache

Fixed for you.

 

[827538]

OLED's downfall is in screen burn in. Phones don't really suffer from this as the small panels generally aren't on for hours at a time. TVs and monitors can suffer when they are on for hours at a time with on screen graphics in the same place all the time - examples include the digital on screen graphics such as the CNN logo or Mac toolbar elements which can relatively quickly burn into the screen.

The cost of OLED panels are prohibitive.

And the O in OLED is organic - which means they will decay over time.

I found a nice primer out there to bring you up to speed with everything else.

This is why Apple are moving direct to mini LED over OLED with an eye on micro LED when that drops in price.

This is not quite true.

People are holding up Micro-LED as some holy grail of display tech but it suffers from its own disadvantages including screen burn.

1. Screen burn does effect Micro-LED, it's just usually not as bad and results in darker pixels rather than color shifted pixels. It's also more of an unknown, we are dealing with very small LED's, how they will react and respond to years of use is still not perfectly understood.
2. It's going to be very expensive, more so than OLED which is a fundamentally simpler display technology with a number of potentially drastic cost reductions from future manufacturing technology, inkjet printing etc.
3. It is not as good as OLED in terms of responsiveness and refresh rates - as you are still dealing with the limits of LCD.
4. Thicker panels - while not an issue everywhere, on phones where every micron counts this is something to consider.
5. Less efficient than OLED as both an emissive layer and filter both have to be control, OLED only have an emissive layer.

OLED technology still has decades of improvements ahead of it and long term I believe it is still the superior display technology. Its' only single downside is burn in which is being improved every single year. Personally I believe the burn in issues with OLED are overblown, the only area I don't think they are ready for is desktop displays where static images are usually present for hours or days on end. Saying Micro-LED doesn't suffer from this problem is wrong.
Source, MSc EEE.

 

[nathan_reilly]

I've been to Hsinchu Science Park! Got an awesome tour of their particle accelerators (TPS and TLS)...I gotta get back there to see this factory

 

[sublunar]

This is not quite true.

People are holding up Micro-LED as some holy grail of display tech but it suffers from its own disadvantages including screen burn.

1. Screen burn does effect Micro-LED, it's just usually not as bad and results in darker pixels rather than color shifted pixels. It's also more of an unknown, we are dealing with very small LED's, how they will react and respond to years of use is still not perfectly understood.
2. It's going to be very expensive, more so than OLED which is a fundamentally simpler display technology with a number of potentially drastic cost reductions from future manufacturing technology, inkjet printing etc.
3. It is not as good as OLED in terms of responsiveness and refresh rates - as you are still dealing with the limits of LCD.
4. Thicker panels - while not an issue everywhere, on phones where every micron counts this is something to consider.
5. Less efficient than OLED as both an emissive layer and filter both have to be control, OLED only have an emissive layer.

OLED technology still has decades of improvements ahead of it and long term I believe it is still the superior display technology. Its' only single downside is burn in which is being improved every single year. Personally I believe the burn in issues with OLED are overblown, the only area I don't think they are ready for is desktop displays where static images are usually present for hours or days on end. Saying Micro-LED doesn't suffer from this problem is wrong.
Source, MSc EEE.

But where does OLED stand on colour reproduction over time though? This appears to be Apple's reason for shifting towards mini LED for iMac size panels.

I presume Apple don't want to get stuck with Samsung as a sole provider of QLED tecchnology any more than they wish to get stuck with LG for OLED monitor size displays.

Mini LED's selling point has to be overall brightness which leads into High Dynamic Range (HDR). This eventually leads into Micro LED but it's understandable due to cost reasons that it's off the table for the the short to medium term. So was OLED in TVs for a long time but somehow OLED panels are appearing to become more cost effective at a point where a lot of manufacturers are giving up on the diminishing returns that manufacturing commodity LCD panels are swiftly becoming.

Money has got to come into this somewhere and technology will eventually advance. Micro LED isn't the target being discussed here - that's something for the future, and it's clear that OLED (Samsung's AMOLED) has a place in phones where thinner is better.

Apple's buying power and parts calculations, plus a political imperative to get away from paying Samsung for their excellent screens, seem to be driving their development path. It's not just about what technology is best, or best value, for their purposes.

Being the first to bring in technology as a unique selling point is just one of the reasons why Apple is spending billions developing new technologies in a bid to bring them into millions of iPhones at scaled prices. Sometimes they'll get in first, sometimes they get in late, but they will hope to be the ones to do it right, and best.

I'm not saying mini LED is the perfect solution but it seems to be the way that Apple have decided to go for their screens.

 

[chromite]

OLED's downfall is in screen burn in. Phones don't really suffer from this as the small panels generally aren't on for hours at a time.

My iPhone XS Max home bar is burned in, OLED phones definitely suffer from burn in.

Also, what? Phones are DEFINITELY on for hours at a time, they are the perfect candidate for burn in

 

[winglet69]

Human rights in Taiwan are better than communist China. Apple might suffer from not relying on slave labour from an oppressive regime to maximise their profits. The cost of their products might need to go up.

Human rights in Taiwan aren't just better than in China, they're better than in the US.

The world needs to quit bowing down to China and start recognizing Taiwan for the free democratic state that it is.

Oh yeah, and...OLED. Display. Micro-mini whatever. Back to what's important.

 

[washburn]

3. It is not as good as OLED in terms of responsiveness and refresh rates - as you are still dealing with the limits of LCD.
4. Thicker panels - while not an issue everywhere, on phones where every micron counts this is something to consider.
5. Less efficient than OLED as both an emissive layer and filter both have to be control, OLED only have an emissive layer.

OLED technology still has decades of improvements ahead of it and long term I believe it is still the superior display technology. Its' only single downside is burn in which is being improved every single year. Personally I believe the burn in issues with OLED are overblown, the only area I don't think they are ready for is desktop displays where static images are usually present for hours or days on end. Saying Micro-LED doesn't suffer from this problem is wrong.
Source, MSc EEE.

Agree with what you're saying that OLED is a fantastic technology and I hope they keep working on it, btw another OLED advantage is for bendable applications its the only display tech that can do it better than anything else. But MicroLED is not based on LCD and has the potential to be the best display tech, but who knows if they'll continue working on OLED it could be as good as MicroLED one day.

 

[high heaven]

Isn't OLED better than miniLED? Why aren't they investing in OLED

OLED isn't for future uses. Burn-in is a huge issue for all kinds of monitors.

 

[Janichsan]

Just because an OLED TV has a HDMI port in it and you could plug a PC into it doesn't make it a good computer monitor.

Can you name a 'far from prohibitively' priced OLED computer monitor please?
*snip*

Well, you will have to ask these companies why they demand such ridiculous prices, since a 55" OLED panel alone costs about $500. And before you complain that this statistic is for OLED TVs: the actual panel is not really different for TVs and computer displays. The differences are mainly in the surrounding electronics and the coating, which makes only for a fraction of the cost.

The ASUS display you bring up as evidence for your point is part of their ProArt product series, which is targeted at the same market segment as Apple's famously un-cheap Pro Display XDR display. The same product line also contains LCD displays with overall comparable specs which aren't cheap either.

 

[sublunar]

Well, you will have to ask these companies why they demand such ridiculous prices, since a 55" OLED panel alone costs about $500. And before you complain that this statistic is for OLED TVs: the actual panel is not really different for TVs and computer displays. The differences are mainly in the surrounding electronics and the coating, which makes only for a fraction of the cost.

The ASUS display you bring up as evidence for your point is part of their ProArt product series, which is targeted at the same market segment as Apple's famously un-cheap Pro Display XDR display. The same product line also contains LCD displays with overall comparable specs which aren't cheap either.

Average selling price, eh? What if I mentioned that the average cost of an AMOLED panel for iPhones appears to be in the $100 range for the iPhone Xs? You forget markup yes, but also retailers, shipping, R&D, etc take their toll too. By contrast LCD panels are becoming so cheap to make that there's no profit in making them. Apple are moving away from the simplistic LCD panels - first going retina, with wide gamut HDR, and soon to miniLED backlighting.

That ProART Asus display you link appears to have 1152 local dimming zones with HDR and a high colour gamut covering 100% sRGB, 99% DCI-P3, 99.5% Adobe RGB, and 89% REC2020 and display 10 bit colour, mini LED, 1200 nits peak brightness, and a Thunderbolt 3 port. £3300 on Amazon UK store.

The price is not shocking given the spec. And it's something I'd expect Apple to use some of their economy of scale to bring down if they are intending to use something like that in an iMac Pro.

If you can buy a huge LG OLED B9 TV for $1000-$1500 why aren't more people doing versions for computer monitors? It's a question that you're still skipping over by avoiding the elephant in the room.

After all, gamers can buy high refresh rate monitors - another elephant in the room - going up to and over $1000 to achieve 240Hz with super low response times and HDR. This is something that OLED will struggle to replicate at sane costs for a while at the least. Where are the 240Hz OLED TVs?

I'm just skirting over exact monitor specs of course, I'm not the biggest fan of when people say 1Tb SSD should cost peanuts because some no-make sells SATA rubbish for far less than Samsung sells their 970Pro NVME 4x PCIe sticks for. Just like SSD, some people have faulty idea of what a 4k monitor panel should cost. I've not done nearly enough research on monitor panels but even I can understand that gamers who say they can buy a 27 inch monitor for under $200 are probably not seeing the point in an Acer Predator X27 for $1000 in just the same way that I switch off when I see people saying they can get 1Tb of SSD for $100.

To use an analogy which I am more familiar with, it's like people asking why Apple aren't putting Intel Optane storage technology into Macs - it's incredibly high performance storage - almost as fast as RAM - and survives power cuts. It's used in some fusion style drives in PCs but is too power hungry for use in laptops or mobile devices. And it comes at a steep cost.

Optane looks fantastic, but Apple have never used it.

My conclusion remains that no computer manufacturer is seeing a mass market for OLED monitors, and nobody's doing an AIO for sure for the reasons I have outlined - mainly the burn-in.

Lifetime for OLED also appears to be behind LCD and power consumption, while lower than an LED backlit display if scenes are dark, are higher if it's bright.

If I'm going for colour accurate work right now I'm buying some sort of LCD/LED with local dimming and perhaps mini LED. That's where that market is headed I'm afraid.

Look at the 5 figure Sony reference monitors that Apple's Pro XDR pits itself against - they are largely LCD monitors with 1000 nits brightness. Unlike OLED TVs I imagine they aren't interested in the thinnest possible panel as a gimmick for an industrial screen, no complaints about thickness or bezels (thankfully).

To be fair they sell an OLED variant but that incidentally doesn't cover BT.2020 gamut in full but I guess colourists will just rent for a set amount of time before getting a new one whichever they choose.

 

[Janichsan]

Average selling price, eh? What if I mentioned that the average cost of an AMOLED panel for iPhones appears to be in the $100 range for the iPhone Xs?

The screens in the iPhone X/11 are not good comparisons, as they aren't simple panels. They have the OLED layer folded over at the bottom to have the electrical contacts pointing upwards and thus reduce the bottom bezel. This makes them more complicated to produce and hence more expensive.

A regular, flat, rectangular OLED panel of comparable size and same technology are by now roughly in same ball park as LCD panels.

… with HDR and a high colour gamut covering 100% sRGB, 99% DCI-P3, 99.5% Adobe RGB, and 89% REC2020 and display 10 bit colour, mini LED, 1200 nits peak brightness, and a Thunderbolt 3 port.

Which – to repeat that – are pretty much identical specs to the OLED display, admittedly save for the brightness.

After all, gamers can buy high refresh rate monitors - another elephant in the room - going up to and over $1000 to achieve 240Hz with super low response times and HDR. This is something that OLED will struggle to replicate at sane costs for a while at the least. Where are the 240Hz OLED TVs?

OLEDs don't need 240 Hz to achieve the same impression of responsiveness and smoothness. That's the point of the technology. They have a switching time which can be as little as a thousandth of that of the fastest LCDs. As the refresh rate is rather limited by the electronics, not the display technology (unless it's LCD, of course), there would be nothing really stopping someone from making a (true) 240 Hz OLED TV, except that it would be completely pointless.

Also, you do know that these "240 Hz" refresh rates in LCD TVs are bullyotz, don't you?

 

[sublunar]

The screens in the iPhone X/11 are not good comparisons, as they aren't simple panels. They have the OLED layer folded over at the bottom to have the electrical contacts pointing upwards and thus reduce the bottom bezel. This makes them more complicated to produce and hence more expensive.

A regular, flat, rectangular OLED panel of comparable size and same technology are by now roughly in same ball park as LCD panels.

I'll concede I read about that advancement by Apple for the phones. The Xs examples was the first I found. The iPhone 11 probably costs $70 but I won't cite that because I can't remember if it applies to the 12 or 12 Pro too.

Apple are moving away from bog standard LCD to OLED - for phones anyway - because pretty soon LCD will be the VHS of panel tech while OLED is the DVD, and over the horizon is Blu-Ray (mini LED). And that comparison is there because something else is coming round the corner to supersede BR too.

That illusion of luxury and value that OLED offers in the phone sphere - next up when economical will be mini LED. Apple are skipping OLED for mini LED where their computers and iPads are concerned.

If OLED is a technologically great idea let's ignore Apple and ask why more Dell or HP AIOs aren't OLED?

Which – to repeat that – are pretty much identical specs to the OLED display, admittedly save for the brightness.

But you can't minimise the importance of brightness like the other specs matter more...

Surely power consumption in phones increases past the average when the brightness goes up which explains why Dark Mode was brought in. Its a battery saving feature as we'll as a stylistic one.

But I wasn't focussing on phones or iPads, I was looking at PC monitors.

OLEDs don't need 240 Hz to achieve the same impression of responsiveness and smoothness. That's the point of the technology. They have a switching time which can be as little as a thousandth of that of the fastest LCDs. As the refresh rate is rather limited by the electronics, not the display technology (unless it's LCD, of course), there would be nothing really stopping someone from making a (true) 240 Hz OLED TV, except that it would be completely pointless.

Also, you do know that these "240 Hz" refresh rates in LCD TVs are bullyotz, don't you?

Pointless and costly? That's really the limit as OLED would have to be relatively disposable and, like plasma TVs back in the day there's a price to pay for the best display experience.

You're concentrating on TVs again and their trick modes and claims to support high refresh modes, PC monitors don't need the trick modes. What do you use for a monitor by the way?

When I buy TVs I turn all the trick modes off because that's what they are - processing modes to offer an illusion to suit viewing tastes - as you say.

I don't buy TVs very often and I'm not really bothered by thinness or lack of bezels like some people are in here

It's the value for money against picture quality that a TV offers that gets me on board, in a few years if that's OLED then so be it.

But once again, better minds than us have decided that OLED computer monitors (and tablets, for that matter) are generally not economical.

That's really the point at the end of the day. Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft - none of the big boys are betting their computing farm on OLED. Some of them will sell it to you without a doubt, but the development cash is going elsewhere.

 

[Sitti]

...by the end of 2021. I was thinking about getting new 16" MBP this year, but looks like I have to make my aging 2012 rMBP last until next year.

 

[Janichsan]

You're concentrating on TVs again and their trick modes and claims to support high refresh modes, PC monitors don't need the trick modes.

You were the one to explicitely bring up 240 Hz OLED TVs, and I just followed suit. But again: unlike LCDs, the framerate of OLED displays would only be limited by the electronics, not the panel. This true for TVs as well as for computer monitors.

 

[George Dawes]

I recall reading the booklet for an oled Sony TV I was thinking of buying it mentioned trying to avoid black bars below and above the image as it could cause image retention . ... that put me right off the tech permanently