Epistar and Lextar announced plans to establish a joint holding company, effectively merging the two companies.
The plan is to delist both companies from Taiwan's stock exchange and list the new company by the end of October 2020. The two companies will continue to operate independently, but the holding company's main focus for its future revenue growth will be on mini LEDs and microLEDs products and technologies.
According to a report from Taiwan's Economic Daily news, a new mini-LED and micro-LED display factory is under planning in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park. The new fab is built by Apple (who will invest $334 million) in collaboration with AU Optronics and Epistar.
According to the report, the Science Park Administartion approved Apple, Auo and Epistar's plan on February 18. The new fab will act as an expansion of Apple's existing display center in Taiwan.
Taiwan-based Unity Opto Technology announced plans to invest $1.9 billion NT (around $64 million USD) to setup six new production lines for mini-LEDs and micro-LEDs.
Unity Opto Technology, established in 1993, develops and markets a wide variety of LED products, including LED packages, LED back lighting for displays and automotive LED products.
Taiwan-based LED producer Epistar is in talks with China-based LED display maker Leyard Opto-Electronic to setup a Mini-LED and Micro-LED production site in Wuxi, China. The two companies (actually Leyard and Epistar's subsidiary Yenrich Technology) will setup a joint-venture with a budget of $142 million.
Leyard says that the plan is to form the joint venture six months after getting the final approval for the plan. This will enable the production to begin in the new fab in 2023. It is still not clear whether the new fab will produce mini and micro LED chips - or actual displays.
LED developer Lextar Electronics announced that next week at Touch Taiwan 2019 it will showcase a 5.1" transparent active-matrix microLED display that achieves an extremely high brightness - 30,000 nits.
This is Lextar's first public demonstration of a micro-LED display. Last year at Touch Taiwan 2018 the company unveiled its first micro-LED chips. The company recognizes that its micro-LED display technology will not be ready for commercialization before 2020 at the earliest.
AU Optronics announced that it will demonstrate a 12.1" LTPS micro-LED display prototype next week that features a resolution of 1920x720 (169 PPI). It seems that this is the same display shown at IFA 2018.
The 2018 display used blue LEDs with color conversion, which achieved "marvelous color performance", according to AUO.
Luumii, a joint-venture between Micro-LED developer Rohinni and Koja, announced that it has started to mass produce its micro-LED and mini-LED based notebook computer keyboard backlights and logo lighting solutions.
Luumii says that its solutions are more compact and offer a higher power efficiency compared to current solutions, and may also enhance product features and user experience as it offers colored lighting and animations. Luumii's current capacity is 34,000 units per month, and by the end of 2019 it will increase the capacity to 100,000 monthly units.
US-based Rohinni announced that it has received initial orders for its Pixalux mini-LED and micro-LED placement solution. The company expects to ship more systems in the current quarter, and anticipates higher-volume market adoption in 2020.
Rohinni says that its system combines higher throughput and accuracy for small-die applications to provide a compelling and highly-competitive solution.