Impressions From InfoComm China 2025 – AI Stitched Into Many Aspects Of LED Display Tech

April 23, 2025 by guest author, Florian Rotberg

I was chatting this morning with Florian Rotberg of Sixteen:Nine content partner invidis, who who was in Beijing last week for InfoComm China, a sister show to InfoComm (US) and ISE in Barcelona. It runs every April and attracts the same kind of vendors and attendees seen at the related shows.

What was interesting was hearing about how AI is stitched in to the products and services of suppliers, in a way a lot of industry observers like Florian and I expected but didn’t see at ISE back in February.

I mention this because Florian has posted on the invidis site about his impressions from Beijing, and I am re-posting a browser-translated version here …

What could possibly be new just a few weeks after ISE? A lot, as a visit to InfoComm China in Beijing shows. In addition to all the major LED manufacturers, Nvidia, the AI ​​heavyweight par excellence, was present at a ProAV trade fair for the first time.

InfoComm’s sister trade fair in China, takes place annually in April in Beijing. All major LED manufacturers and their ecosystem partners participated, as well as many suppliers unknown in Europe. However, one theme clearly dominated all the booths: AI.

Those who traveled to China for new display innovations were unfortunately disappointed. LCD, OLED, and other technologies were only marginally represented at the largest ProAV trade fair in the Middle Kingdom. The trade fair, primarily aimed at Chinese integrators and end users, revolves around DV-LED.

Traditional LCDs can be found on every corner in China, but they are often of inferior quality and poorly maintained. Integrators and suppliers are invariably enthusiastic about LED displays – displays have long been boring. Nevertheless, even in China, digital signage without LCDs and other devices is unimaginable.

AI innovations without end – will the screens still remain black?

While SMD is still the bread and butter business, especially in China, differentiation is taking place through a variety of successor solutions. Whether COB, COG, or transparent LED solutions, but also further developments from Novastar, Aten, and Digibird.

The innovations are almost always behind the facade – less new, even finer pixel pitches (MicroLED with 0.6mm is considered state-of-the-art – but is still very expensive), but many AI-based image enhancements, remote device management with AI support, more efficient 8K content management and AI-optimized power and thermal management.

Whether and to what extent many of the new features will be relevant in practice will only be revealed by the final products. However, a new challenge arises: Many of the AI-based features were developed for the Chinese AI cosmos surrounding Deepseek. Whether and how the functions will also run on Western AI platforms remains to be seen.

The US government is exerting considerable pressure to prevent Deepseek and other similar devices from being deployed in allied countries. As far as we were able to gather in discussions at InfoComm China, product features developed with AI should not pose a problem for Western customers. However, AI functions on Deepseek during ongoing operations will be virtually impossible in the future.

The “brave” new digital signage world we’ve been living in since Liberation Day. Because even the best products remain unsellable when imports are taxed at 145 percent. Hope remains that digital signage projects in the US and Europe will continue to have access to innovation developed in China.