MiniLED TV to overtake OLED TV in premium sector in 2025

MiniLED TVs will be leading the premium TV market by 2025, market research firm UBI Research said Tuesday.

China’s TCL lead the development of MiniLED TV but the market will be led by Samsung and LG, the firm said.

MiniLED TV will overtake OLED TV in market share after 2024, UBI Research said.

MiniLED TV is a liquid crystal display (LCD) TV that uses micrometer-sized LED as the backlighting (BLU) while also adding quantum dot film. This increases the color gamut and high dynamic ranges of the TV compared to conventional LCD TVs. 

They also have over 3,000 local dimming zones, increasing the contrast ratio than the previous full array local dimming (FALD) BLU TV while reducing the halo effect. FALD BLU TV has local dimming zones between 300 to 500.

For MiniLED to have level performance with OLED, there must be as many local dimming zones as the number of pixels, UBI Research said, but size reduction of LED will allow for only local dimming zones between 1,000 to 3,000 in MiniLED TVs sold this year. Around 2.5 million MiniLED TV will be shipped this year, the research firm said. 

For MiniLED to have level resolution with OLED, there must be over 100,000 local dimming zones, the firm said. This will require LEDs and thin-film transistors (TFT) in the hundreds of thousands which will increase the production cost close to OLED. 

Using frame retardant type 4 (FR4) or bismaleimide-triazine (BT) for the backplane of the backlighting and have 3,000 local dimming zones allow costs of MiniLED to be half of that of OLED, which is the sweet spot to increase resolution of LCD TVs while being price competitive, UBI Research said.

MiniLED backlight is expected to cost between US$250 to US$1,100 for 65-inch TV with 10,000 local dimming zones or below, the firm said. The price of the TV, depending on the local dimming zone number, will be around US$1,500 to US$6,000.