The novel coronavirus COVID-19 was a very unusual year in 2020. Under the shadow of the new coronavirus COVID-19, the global economy is down, and all walks of life are greatly affected. The LED lighting drive chip industry is no exception.
In the first half of the year, due to the delay of resumption of work and the reduction of overseas orders, the revenue of LED lighting driver chip manufacturers showed a large decline. However, after entering 3q20, overseas backlight and lighting orders have warmed up, and the demand for domestic display screen has gradually increased. In addition, the demand of European and American plant lighting market has increased, the revenue of chip manufacturers has rebounded, and the profitability has also improved.
In the past few years, the LED lighting driver chip industry has experienced ups and downs, and the market pattern has also changed greatly.
Throughout the world, the expansion of LED lighting driver chips is mainly concentrated in Chinese mainland in the past 2016-2020 years. The main force of expanding production includes three security photoelectric, huaxan photoelectric, Qianzhao photoelectric, poly photoelectric, Shunchang ocean and the latest Nanchang trillion Chi, and so on. LED's terminal demand is still global demand, but manufacturing has been transferred to Chinese mainland. Taichang wafer optoelectronics and Seoul weiaoshi, the largest LED factory in South Korea, transformed high-end products to avoid large-scale competition with mainland chip factories. European manufacturer OSRAM still retains the 6-inch factory in Malaysia, while other small Korean factories and European and American factories gradually withdrew from chip manufacturing and found generation factories in the mainland.
From 2019 to 2020, the concentration of global LED lighting driver chip industry will further increase, and the proportion of production capacity of the top 10 manufacturers will increase from 82% in 2019 to 84% in 2020. In 2020, the top five manufacturers of LED lighting driver chips are San'an, Huacan, zhaochi, Jingdian and Qianzhao.
In 2019, the Chinese mainland manufacturers GaN-LED epitaxial film production capacity of about 37 million 530 thousand pieces / year (4 inches, the same below), the output of about 28 million 260 thousand tablets / year, the average capacity utilization rate of about 75%. Since the end of 2019, the industry has gradually warmed up and the demand for epitaxial chips has gradually increased. However, due to the influence of covid-19, the recovery of LED in mainland China in the first half of 2020 is not as expected. However, since 3q20, the production capacity of many chip factories has been full, and the demand for LED epitaxial chips has rebounded significantly. To 4q20, the demand for GaN LED epitaxial chips has reached 2.9 million chips / month.
In the past few years, the main direction for domestic LED lighting driver chip manufacturers to expand production is blue-green epitaxial chips, and the application field is also mainly in the lighting market. With the development of LED industry, lighting is still the application market with the largest demand. However, in the past two years, driven by the market demand for backlight, small spacing and ultra-small spacing, the demand for LED epitaxial chips for display has increased significantly.
In the field of lighting, some changes have also taken place. The legalization of marijuana in North America and the food shortage caused by the epidemic have led to a significant increase in the plant lighting market. High light efficiency and full spectrum health lighting is another market thrust. The development of LED market drives the increase of demand for chips and also promotes the growth of demand for lighting epitaxial chips. Due to the fierce competition in the market of medium and low-end lighting products, some manufacturers with technical strength gradually reduce the medium and low-end lighting capacity and turn to the high-end lighting market, such as Huacan Optoelectronics. Originally, ordinary lighting chips accounted for more than half of the total capacity, but after adjustment in 2020, backlight The production capacity of display and high-end lighting has become the main business, and the proportion of ordinary lighting chips is getting lower and lower. San'an optoelectronics has also reduced the production capacity of ordinary lighting chips and turned to the high-end lighting market.
In the traditional application field, due to the increasing demand for high-end products, the demand for GaN LED epitaxial wafers also increases synchronously; In emerging applications, the demand of mini / micro LED market also drives the growth of GaN LED epitaxial wafer demand.
In terms of mini backlight, the number of LED lighting driving chips used in the traditional backlight scheme is small, which is calculated in ten level units, while the number of chips used in mini LED backlight is calculated in 10000 level or even 100000 level units. Although the chip size is reduced, because the usage is hundreds of times longer, with the increase of the display penetration rate of mini LED backlight, The demand for GaN LED epitaxial chips for mini LED backlight will also grow rapidly.
Secondly, in terms of mini display, with the gradual entry of LED display into commercial display and other markets, the demand for mini LED display will gradually increase. With the decrease of display screen spacing, the demand for pixels increases in geometric multiples, so the market demand for LED epitaxial chips will also play a driving role, especially in micro LED display. Once commercialized, the demand for epitaxial chips will be even greater.