TCL Huaxing plays a new trump card

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Liu Baodan

Against the backdrop of a recovery in the semiconductor display panel industry, TCL Huaxing, one of the global panel leaders, has reached another milestone.

On November 16, at the 2024 TCL Huaxing Global Display Ecosystem Conference (DTC2024), TCL Huaxing announced the official mass production of printed OLEDs and launched a new technology brand—APEX, showcasing TCL Huaxing's cutting-edge display solutions, ecosystem development, and global strategic layout.

Liu Xiaolan, Vice President of TCL Huaxing, shared the origin of APEX: In this era where displays are ubiquitous and screens are everywhere, display has become a basic necessity for survival. However, the complex parameters and barriers to understanding the technology have become the main factors troubling most users in choosing display panels.

"We need a brand that simplifies complexity, reduces users' barriers to understanding technology, and lowers the cost of product selection."

What has attracted more external attention is that after 11 years of investment, TCL Huaxing's first printed OLED specialty product has officially entered the mass production stage.

Printed OLED technology refers to the production of OLED display panels through inkjet printing processes. Compared to traditional vacuum deposition processes, this technology can significantly reduce costs while achieving high PPI and longer lifespan.

The display screen for medical devices is the first category of printed OLED products that TCL Huaxing has chosen for mass production. Cao Weiran, head of the printed OLED center at TCL Huaxing, stated that this application area has high specifications, but the demand is not very large. Since printed OLED is still in the trial production stage, it cannot run at a large scale yet, so they will choose a product category with lower quantity requirements.

Yield rate is a major challenge for the mass production of printed OLEDs. Through small-batch production on the 5.5-generation printed OLED display panel trial production line, TCL Huaxing found that the yield rate issues they were previously concerned about have been somewhat controlled in a short period.

"We were previously worried about issues that could easily occur, but we can achieve relatively good control during this process," Cao Weiran said. Based on the current status of the first medical products launched, the yield rate has indeed met the company's expectations, and they will challenge even higher goals next.

Cao Weiran pointed out that TCL Huaxing will push printed OLED technology towards consumer-grade products to enable more large-scale production of this technology. While increasing production capacity, they will also continuously improve specifications.

For TCL Huaxing, printed OLED technology is extremely important.

Recently, TCL founder and chairman Li Dongsheng stated that as early as ten years ago, TCL Huaxing chose printed OLED as the main direction for next-generation display technology for two main reasons: first, traditional OLED patents have already been laid out by leading companies, and TCL would face significant patent restrictions if it developed in this field; second, printed OLED is more competitive than traditional OLED According to Zhao Jun, Senior Vice President of TCL Technology and CEO of TCL Huaxing, printed OLED aligns with the only certain major trend in the display industry for the next five years, which is the expansion and increased penetration of OLED in medium-sized applications.

He stated that there are several technologies for OLED in medium-sized applications, and printed OLED technology stands out with very prominent characteristics among these technologies. Printed OLED provides good display performance while offering a competitively viable OLED display solution, which helps to expand the popularity and usage of OLED in medium-sized smart terminal products.

In addition, Zhao Jun pointed out that although there are still some technical challenges that printed OLED technology continues to overcome and resolve, it is a very viable and competitive technology. "From a technical principle perspective, we believe that printed OLED may be the only technology capable of covering sizes from small to large. Small size refers to smartphones, while large size refers to large TV products."

While betting on the next generation of display technology, TCL Huaxing is also continuously expanding its market share in current mainstream display technologies, including the recent acquisition of LG's Guangzhou LCD panel factory for 10.8 billion yuan.

In this regard, Li Dongsheng stated that the general view in the industry is that the next generation of display technology will replace liquid crystal displays (LCD) in a relatively short period. However, based on TCL's own development experience, there is currently no technology that can replace LCD in large screen displays.

"In the foreseeable future, LCD will definitely remain mainstream in large screen displays, and with innovations such as Mini LED or other quantum dot technologies, the product lifecycle of LCD will be extended, and its competitiveness will be strengthened," said Li Dongsheng.

Against the backdrop of the photovoltaic industry entering the bottom of the market cycle, semiconductor display panels have supported TCL Technology's performance over the past year. In the first three quarters of this year, TCL Technology's semiconductor display business performed particularly well, with revenue increasing by 25.74% year-on-year, achieving a net profit of 4.443 billion yuan, an improvement of 6.067 billion yuan year-on-year, and generating an operating net cash flow of 19.838 billion yuan.

Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of this year, analysts at Huatai Securities believe that considering the leading panel manufacturers' increased production control and the recovery of TV demand, large-sized LCD panel prices are expected to stabilize and remain steady.

With one hand expanding LCD production and the other betting on printed OLED, TCL Huaxing is steadily navigating through the industry cycle