First impressions from SID Displayweek 2024

The display industry's premier event, Displayweek, is over. We will now collect our notes, thoughts, photos and images and will share it all in the coming days. In the meantime, we'd like to detail some initial impressions.

Generally speaking, it seems as if the display industry is going through a phase of relatively little innovation, especially with the mature LCD and OLED industry segments. While it has been a very busy week, and attendance at the event seems high, the number of actual demonstrations and prototypes was not stellar and compared to previous years, the booths were smaller and some companies skipped the event this year or preferred to only show their latest displays in private settings. Some thoughts we have:

 
  • The main innovations in the OLED industry revolve around power efficiency, that is true for some years now
  • Not much is new in terms of new OLED form factors or capabilities
  • Many companies are showing microLED display prototypes, mostly automotive displays, large-area tiled TVs and AR solutions
  • Apple's withdrawal from the microLED industry is the talk of the day, but this won't stop the microLED industry
  • From what we've seen, microLEDs prototype performance is improving, but it is not yet on par with OLEDs or LCDs
  • Large-area tiled MicroLEDs are impressive, but most displays still suffer from defective pixels and less-then-perfect tiling
  • There's much talk about QD-EL displays, still an early stage, but companies say there's good R&D progress 
  • The latest color E Ink displays are quite nice, and keep improving
  • There's much focus on AR technologies and solutions, including new waveguides and light engines
Posted: May 17,2024 by Ron Mertens