SID’s Display Week Expected To Highlight Advances In MicroLED, Color E-Paper: Futuresource

May 6, 2025 by Dave Haynes

The research firm Futuresource Consulting has pushed out a piece advancing display technologies it expects to see demonstrated at next week’s Society for Information Display event in San Jose, CA.

The advancer, by Principal Consultant Ted Romanowitz, drafts off what he saw at Touch Taiwan, in Guess Where.

As happens these days, much of the interest and buzz is around microLED and color e-paper, with Romanowitz suggesting the former is steadily advancing in technology and maturing with respect to the ecosystem.

MicroLED technology is evolving rapidly towards mass production and economies of scale. In the next several years MicroLED will disrupt the global flat panel display marketplace by delivering significantly better image quality and longer lifetime at comparable average selling prices (ASPs).      

At Display Week, AUO will reveal a 127-inch diagonal display, consisting of 42” module boards, built on their Gen 4.5 fab, which is expected to enter mass production by late 2025 or early 2026. This development promises higher yields and increased output, opening the market to other brands.

Innolux will also make a significant impact with their 204-inch 8K MicroLED display, utilizing 12.3-inch diagonal modules. Innolux currently transfers only blue pixels, using quantum dots for colour conversion. However, the firm also plans to introduce a RGB product by CES 2026.

Romanowitz writes that there are now “a few hundred companies” providing technology and manufacturing capabilities to mass produce the next generation of display technology.

These individual companies are merging into 10 to 12 ecosystem clusters, like AUO, Innolux and others, that will produce a final product.  Depending on a firm’s own engineering and manufacturing capabilities, you can source components at various level of integration as well as facilitating your own ecosystem cluster via strategic partnerships.    

Significant developments in mass transfer and die bonding will deliver significant gains across flip chip Chip on Board (CoB) as well as MicroLED Chip on Glass (COG). This progress – along with non-destructive testing, selective laser lift off and advanced repair capabilities – are crucial for achieving the high quality and colour spaces required for various applications, from Pro AV to consumer televisions.   

Regarding e-paper, Romanowitz suggests there are now more than 125 key supply chain members and major brands like AUO, BOE, HKC, Innolux, Philips, Sharp and TCL/China Star working with the energy-sipping display tech. I’m not sure this includes companies doing electronic shelf labels, but it is evident most of the display manufacturers that sell into the digital signage, DOOH and general pro AV markets have now at minimum started showing off their version of color e-paper at trade shows.

It is important to note that they’re not so much innovating in e-paper as they are adapting products from Taiwan’s E Ink and presenting them as their own.

One interesting note from Romanowitz regards E Ink’s premium color e-paper product, the Spectra 6. My Googling hasn’t been all the productive in coming up with the level of color support for Spectra 6, but the report says it can achieve between 50,000 and 60,000 colours. The doesn’t sound like much when you consider a typical TV with Full HD supports about 17 million colors, but Spectra supports more than 10X the colors of the other E Ink product being aimed at this market as poster replacements, Kaleido 3.

One last thing: Romanowitz says a company called Litemax (which has a stand at Display Week) is innovating by cutting e-paper panels into unique shapes such as triangles and half circles, for specialized applications.

I’ve been asked if I am at Display Week, and sadly I will not be. I have a trip in the total opposite direction the following week, to Munich and Digital Signage Summit Europe. Plus between the Canada as 51st state thing, and dodgy border and air traffic control conditions, I’m not going south anytime soon.