With the development of Mini/Micro LED technology, the application range of LED display is also expanding, and many emerging scenes such as naked eye 3D, XR virtual shooting, cinema screen and creative display are attracting more attention. Recently, Liard, Zhou Ming technology, Abison and other three LED display enterprises to accept investor research, and disclosed their latest progress and dynamics in the XR virtual shooting application market segmentation, as well as their views on the LED display market next year.
The XR virtual filming market continues to grow
XR virtual shooting takes LED display as the background, digital scenes are projected on the LED screen, and then the real-time engine rendering and camera tracking are combined to integrate real people with virtual scenes, roles and light and shadow effects.
XR virtual photography is a bright area in the LED display market this year, according to the 2022 White Paper on Small Pitch and Micro-Pitch Research. In 2021, the output value of XR market will be within 1 billion yuan, and in 2022, it will continue to rise on this basis, approaching 1.5 billion yuan.
Chau Ming Technology, Liard and Abison all expressed their affirmation of the development potential of this market in the investor interaction, and brought different views on the future development of this market.
Zhou Ming Technology believes that LED display, as a display material representing the future development direction, is one of the most suitable interactive media between people and the digital world, and is bound to benefit from the development of XR/AR brought by the increase in the demand for digital interaction.
The technology and products of LED display industry are progressing constantly, driving the application boundary expansion of LED display in XR/AR field, and gradually forming the overall solution with LED screen as the core, which is an important market segment direction for the development of XR.
Taking virtual film and television shooting as an example, some large overseas companies have long been using LED screens to help film and television production. Driven by live streaming and variety shows, market opportunities are brewing in China. In the foreseeable future, the domestic market space will gradually develop and grow.
In the XR market layout, Zhou Ming Technology said that the company is mainly in the virtual film and television production segment of the market continues to make efforts. In the overseas market, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhou Ming has strong competitiveness and bargaining power in the overseas high-end XR/AR market, especially in the field of virtual film and television production, and has a stable leading position in the field of virtual film and television production. In the domestic market, LED peers began to pay attention to the XR/AR field, the market is in the initial cultivation period.
Zhouming has been deeply engaged in the LED industry for many years, providing customers with overall optical display solutions, high-quality products and a strong after-sales service team. In the process of the total expansion of the domestic XR/AR market, we fully enjoy the dividends of market development, and gradually make breakthroughs in the application scenarios of radio, television, film and universities.
As for the selection of point spacing of LED display in the virtual shooting market, Zhou Ming Technology said that the following factors are mainly considered in the selection of point spacing of LED display involved in virtual shooting: First, shooting distance and shooting method. LED display has the best viewing distance, which needs to be combined with the shooting distance to select the point spacing. When required to shoot close up, in order to make the film better, will choose a smaller spacing products. Second, cost. In general, the smaller the spacing, the higher the cost. The client will balance cost and effect.
Liard's virtual reality business is mainly conducted by NP Corporation and Dehuo Technology. Speaking about the layout, Liard said that the meta universe concept has been popular in the last two years, and NP's optical motion capture technology and products have increased in demand over the last year. However, last year, NP Company also encountered the problem of insufficient supply chain. For nearly seven or eight months, it was difficult for us to get NP products in China. The reason was that some large international suppliers they cooperated with could not provide raw materials on time and in quantity, so NP company dared not take too many orders. But since September this year, this problem has been gradually solved, so you can see that the growth rate of the whole virtual reality sector is actually increased in the third quarter.
It is worth noting that Liard believes that the expectation and investment on the future of the meta-universe in the market now drive some new demands in the gradual landing, so we believe that whether NP company or the domestic virtual moving point company, their future development trend is relatively good.
Virtual film and television production is another hot application driven by LED innovation in the past two years. Abison said that compared with traditional green screen shooting, the LED screen virtual production technology has significant advantages, allowing the creative team to visually see the shooting environment, according to the script in real time to modify the effects of the scene, greatly improving the efficiency of communication.
In view of the new business field of virtual studio, Abison actively carries out technical layout and launches a series of products and solutions. According to Abison, in September held in the Netherlands International Radio and Television Technology Exhibition (IBC 2022), the company with LED virtual studio solutions and a number of new products actively participate in IBC, the company with super color restoration ability, excellent HDR effect, high frame rate, high gray, high refresh, lower reflectivity, less moorlines, etc. Attracted a large number of professional customer experience and consultation. In October 2022, Abison Virtual Production Ecology Conference was held in Garden Studios, a top film and television creative studio in London, UK. The company cooperated with senior experts in the field of virtual production in Europe to carry out in-depth communication with ecological partners in the industry, and jointly explore more possibilities of virtual production enabling artistic creation.
Up to now, the virtual shooting full scene LED display solution launched by Abison has been successfully applied in the United States, China, Britain, France, Russia, Canada and other major countries in the world virtual studio, studio, XR stage and other scenes, has obtained good market feedback, the industry advantage is significant.
Experts say that Research believes that the output value of XR virtual shooting in 2022 will further increase on the basis of 2021, and is expected to continue the growth trend in 2023. However, it takes time to cultivate and expand relevant operation talents and teams at present. With the talent team in place, the market scale is expected to be further enlarged.
What are the future growth points for LED display?
Recently, Qatar World Cup event let LED display once again out of the circle, so that overseas market heat surge; The domestic market will also be able to seize the tail of 2022 with the adjustment of quarantine policies.
However, the Qatar World Cup is only a short-term event. For the wonderful overseas market in 2022, many industry people are not worried about the changes in 2023, the change of future demand momentum.
In recent years, such as the World Cup, the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the Winter Olympics and other major events will have a certain impact on the company's performance, but the impact of a single project is very limited compared to Liard itself, Liard said. Therefore, whether overseas or domestic, the performance is mainly accumulated through Liard's regular direct sales or channel customers' orders.
Liard believes that the strong demand of LED display industry last year was due to the recovery of the epidemic and the emergence of some new products to improve the cost performance, which opened up the market demand. This year should have continued the trend of last year, but this year, especially in the middle and high-end market of our direct sales, it used to be mainly obtained through government bidding, which resulted in travel restrictions. A lot of these projects don't work, so some of the demand is suppressed; If the control measures are relatively loose in the future, the rebound of demand and the emergence of new technology bring about a decline in product prices, then the whole industry will have a relatively large recovery market.
The second increase in demand, Liard says, comes from sinking domestic markets. Last year, the development of small spacing products in the sinking market has just started, and this year is also affected by the control policy. If the latter can be stable, it is expected that there will be an increment.
The third is the development of new markets. Liard introduced that its products cooperated with LG in 2019 passed the DCI certification, and LG LED the promotion of LED movie screens in the overseas theater market. In October, Liard LED movie screens also passed the DCI certification, which means that we can use our own brand in the future to layout the global theater market.
For overseas, this year has entered a relatively normal growth trajectory. The new growth point in the future may be the promotion of new products such as Micro LED overseas. In addition, more and more virtual photography or meta-universe applications are combined with display in different fields. From the perspective of Lead's own cultural travel night tour and many projects in the virtual reality sector, this part will also bring new market space.
In this regard, Zhou Ming Technology also said that the current foreign market due to the normalization of the epidemic caused by the release of demand, order situation is good.
Although the domestic market was affected by the epidemic, the demand was temporarily delayed, reducing the base of next year's growth. But in the long run, the country will pay more attention to manufacturing power, digital power and spiritual and cultural construction in the future. As a high-end manufacturing industry and a digital human-computer interaction platform, LED display will have a broad market space in the future.
At the same time, Liu Jun, vice president of Zhou Ming Group, predicted in the annual meeting of experts that the cultural and travel industry will have a very big market opportunity next year, and Zhou Ming technology has made an early layout by relying on the advantages of optical display integration.
With the overseas market gradually out of the gloom, the global exhibition process also quickly restarted. Abison said that the company has exhibited in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and other places many times in 2022, while combining online marketing and other forms to show new products, new technologies and solutions to global customers.
With overseas markets fully recovered, Abison's international markets business grew rapidly during the reporting period. The company seized the opportunity of demand recovery in some overseas markets, continued to increase strategic investment in key areas and markets, increased personnel travel efforts, and vigorously built localized channels to carry out business, so as to achieve a rapid recovery of business in overseas markets.
After years of development, the LED display industry has changed from the initial extensive price competition to the comprehensive strength competition represented by capital and technology. The factors of enterprise comprehensive strength and brand competition are gradually strengthened. The comparative advantages between the leading LED manufacturers and small and medium-sized manufacturers are more prominent, the industrial concentration is further accelerated, and the industry clearing is intensified.
But it is worth noting that the LED display industry's exploration of new markets and innovation of new technologies in 2022 will bring the industry to a completely new stage. Now under the background of the gradual recovery of offline consumption scene, we should not only seize the opportunity to maintain growth, but also bring more innovation in new opportunities.