1. Overview of LED display driver chip
LED display driver chip is a kind of digital integrated circuit. It controls the brightness and color of LED lamp beads through high-precision current to display text, image and video. With the growing development of small pitch LED, Mini/Micro LED, and the gradual increase of LED lamp bead density, the requirements for accurate current control of LED display driver chips are gradually increasing. The consistency, stability, power consumption and integration of LED display driver chips will play a more critical role in upgrading LED display applications.
At present, the application of LED display technology has two development paths: direct display and backlight, corresponding to the LED direct display driver chip and LED intelligent backlight driver chip, as follows:
(1) LED direct display driver chip
The LED direct display driver chip is an electronic device that drives the LED display module to work normally. It is mainly responsible for the image display function of the LED display screen. Through the analysis of the display data, it uses PWM technology to drive the LED lamp beads to light up. It is one of the core controllers of the LED display screen. The LED direct display driver chip usually provides constant driving current through multiple ports to precisely control the display process of the LED display, and plays a key role in the color, brightness, contrast and other image effects of the LED display.
(2) LED intelligent backlight driver chip
The main function of the LED intelligent backlight driver chip is to realize the display gray effect of the LED backlight source through the constant current on time, which is used to drive Mini LED backlight products. The LED intelligent backlight replaces the ordinary LED light source and is arranged in a matrix on the back of the LCD screen. Unlike the ordinary LED backlight, the MiniLED backlight is divided into multiple backlight display partitions to achieve full matrix area precise dimming, dynamically adjust the light and dark changes according to the image content displayed in each area to show better contrast effect and detail performance, greatly improve the fineness and authenticity of the image, and reduce the power consumption of the LCD display.
LED intelligent backlight driver chip and LED direct display driver chip are different in function and manufacturing process due to different application methods.
2. Market scale prospect of LED display driver chip
In recent years, LED display driver chips have maintained a growth trend. The main reasons are as follows: on the one hand, with the improvement of resolution, the mainstream spacing of the display continues to shrink, and the proportion of small pitch LED display products and Mini/Micro LED display products below P1.0 gradually increases, further promoting the use of LED display driver chips. On the other hand, the proportion of high specification and high unit price display driver chips continues to rise as the end users' requirements for the performance of display products continue to improve.
In 2021, the demand for LED displays will rise significantly, and the major downstream screen manufacturers will actively stock up, which will increase the price and demand of display driver chips at the same time. According to public information, the global market size of LED display driver chips will reach 725 million dollars in 2021, an increase of 116.42% compared with 2020. In the next few years, with the further increase of the proportion of small pitch and Mini/Micro LED displays, the demand for LED display driver chips will also increase. It is estimated that by 2025, the global LED display driver chip market will reach 1.038 billion US dollars, with broad development prospects.
The LED display driver chip industry is also highly concentrated in terms of market concentration. The main manufacturers are enterprises in Chinese Mainland and Taiwan, China.
