I actually think there are no major issues apart from the enormous costs. But costs don't always get outweighed by higher performance. The reason why OLED-Displays were (and are) so successful wasn't just that they had better contrast than LCDs, it was also that they were not massively more expensive.
Compare that to Intel's Optane, the elusive PCM memory technology which finally arrived to take out NAND Flash. Sure, it was faster than Flash, but it was also massively more expensive. It wasn't worth it for most people. So Intel recently discontinued it.
The same could happen for Micro LEDs. It isn't clear whether their quality advantage over OLED is worth a much higher price. Their main advantage over OLEDs (higher max brightness) doesn't seem too relevant anyway.
> Compare that to Intel's Optane, the elusive PCM memory technology which finally arrived to take out NAND Flash. Sure, it was faster than Flash, but it was also massively more expensive. It wasn't worth it for most people. So Intel recently discontinued it.
Intel Optane is barely faster than flash — roughly 3x (for 4k random read) compared to the fastest Samsung SSD [1].
Optane was a failure because it failed to deliver the promised result. Intel would have never poured money into a new technology only three times faster than an existing technology. I recall initial promises were RAM-like speeds.
If Apple is able to spit out 200 million of these screens in a year, I have a very hard time imagining what ingredient could go into the production causing a greater per unit price than a Samsung display.
> Intel Optane is barely faster than flash — roughly 3x (for 4k random read) compared to the fastest Samsung SSD [1].
... and the maximum brightness advantage of micro LEDs may be similarly (un)impressive.
> Optane was a failure because it failed to deliver the promised result.
No, it only failed because the performance/price ratio wasn't good enough compared to NAND flash. That's exactly what I was saying: Both performance and price have to be considered.
> If Apple is able to spit out 200 million of these screens in a year, I have a very hard time imagining what ingredient could go into the production causing a greater per unit price than a Samsung display.
Replace "Apple" with "Intel", "screens" with "Optane disks" and "Samsung Display" with "Samsung Semiconductor", and you see that this argument doesn't work.
uLED will have one major victory over OLED - longevity of the display.
Source: Where I work is tooling up to start producing uLED products for SLA 3D printing. UV uLED + LCD filter all in one. I'm having to teach them how to utilize LIFT.
Higher max brightness is very relevant. most Oled tvs in recent years max out at something like 800-1000 nits. Dolby vision content can be mastered at up to 10000 nits I believe and microled tvs could provide that brightness.
There's something incredibly realistic about highlights being super bright, I think it's going to look more like a window than a TV.
HDR LCD TVs also had significantly higher maximum brightness than OLED TVs, but that advantage apparently didn't matter much compared to the finer contrast and lower black levels of OLED. I think smartphone LCDs were also brighter than OLED displays. It then questionable whether the better maximum brightness of micro LEDs will outweigh a much higher price.
Compare that to Intel's Optane, the elusive PCM memory technology which finally arrived to take out NAND Flash. Sure, it was faster than Flash, but it was also massively more expensive. It wasn't worth it for most people. So Intel recently discontinued it.
The same could happen for Micro LEDs. It isn't clear whether their quality advantage over OLED is worth a much higher price. Their main advantage over OLEDs (higher max brightness) doesn't seem too relevant anyway.