BOE, TCL Huaxing, Shenzhen Tianma and others are betting on Micro LED: What are the chances of winning in the car HUD market?

Since 2025, the application of Micro LED micro displays has found a new focus. Companies including Innolux, BOE, CSOT, Shentianma and other companies have demonstrated Micro LED HUD products and application innovations. It is particularly worth mentioning that these companies are also core suppliers of LCD HUD products. In the automotive field, will HUD become a new battleground for Micro LED display technology?

The automotive display market is accelerating, and panel companies are in-depth layout

"Automobiles are another 'giant' scale display market after TV, mobile phones and NB/PC." According to O The latest data from mdia shows that the global automotive display panel front-mounted market shipments will increase by 9.5% year-on-year in 2024, reaching 202 million pieces. In the display segment scenario with shipments exceeding 100 million, automotive is the only display segment that continues to grow across cycles.

This data means that each new car in the world is equipped with more than 2 screens on average. Competing for the automotive market is a "must compete" for display panel companies. For example, BOE Precision Electronics (the only sales platform for BOE's automotive display business) will exceed the 10 billion mark in revenue in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 25% to HK$13.449 billion. - From a revenue perspective, in the automotive market, panel companies not only provide OPEN cells, but are also heavily involved in the module stage. The integrity of product components is higher, vehicle models are more customized, and the added value of technology and benefits is also higher.

Looking at the HUD market, its growth rate is even faster than the entire vehicle display market. Judging from the geographical distribution of supply, the market share of my country's HUD suppliers has increased rapidly. From being negligible before 2020, it will develop into a dominant position in 2024. Take the industry leader Huayang Group as an example. In 2016, its HUD products were mass-produced. By mid-2023, it took seven years for cumulative shipments to exceed one million sets. However, in 2024, Huayang's HUD shipments exceeded one million sets in a single year, and its cumulative shipments have exceeded 2 million sets.

Car displays are growing rapidly, and HUD products are growing even faster. This is related to my country's new energy and smart vehicles The rapid development of the industry is consistent. The industry believes that from the perspective of opportunities, the domestic display industry chain should seize the opportunity of technological upgrading of the vehicle industry, seize the opportunity of the local vehicle consumer market being the first in the world, and seize the opportunity of the global development of the local automobile industry; from the perspective of responsibility, it should also use better innovation to serve the trend of vehicle intelligence and help the national automobile industry become bigger and stronger.

In this context, the display industry chain’s in-depth layout of automotive scenarios, especially the layout of new principles and material technologies, has a strategic value that transcends the display industry itself and has become a key point for display panel companies to strive for breakthroughs. Among them, Micro LED HUD innovation in early 2025 is an important new direction.

Micro LED HUD may replace LCD HUD, and the battle for the future is here

BOE (BOE) has recently launched two high-brightness HUD head-up display solutions using COG (glass-based) Micro LED technology. The first is a 6.2-inch P0.2 high-brightness RGB Micro LED HUD with a brightness of 30,000 nits; the second is the world's first ultra-bright single-color pixel pitch (Pitch) of only 58 microns, a glass-based Micro LED HUD with a display pixel density of up to 431PPI and a peak brightness of 30,000 nits.

Innolux CarUX launched a 9.6-inch Micro LED AR reflective display solution and demonstrated it at the 2025 US CES and SID exhibitions. It is reported that it uses high-brightness, high-quality, low-energy Micro LED display modules to achieve windshield HUD projection through depth-of-field stereoscopic images, interface design, unique algorithms and exclusive image correction technology. Taiwanese panel company AUO has also launched a 13-inch Micro LED head-up display product to meet the needs of transparent projection on car windshields.

Shenzhen Tianma launched the Micro LED IRIS HUD solution. The 8-inch IRIS HUD resolution reaches PPI (167PPI) and the peak brightness exceeds 10,000nits. The eye brightness exceeds 1300nits, and the transparency of the projection glass exceeds 86%, which cleverly flattens the field of view and makes the image clear. This Micro-LED PHUD (panoramic head-up display) solution won the "Electronic Displays" award at the world's largest embedded exhibition - Embedded World 2025 in Nuremberg, Germany.

TCL Huaxing has also launched an ultra-bright Micro LED PHUD display solution. Its Micro LED PHUD display size is 14.3 inches, integrating the advantages of Micro LED and LTPS technologies to achieve ultra-high brightness, ultra-high contrast, high color gamut and other features. This PHUD displays a contrast ratio of greater than 5:1 under strong ambient light, achieving no blackout in the windshield display area, greatly improving driving safety.

Micro LED from the above five major manufacturers HUD products are all designed with glass substrates, ranging from 6 to 14 inches. The main product features are high brightness, high resolution, high contrast and compact structure. It is worth mentioning that these five major manufacturers account for nearly 70% of the global automotive display market. Especially as Japan's JDI gradually withdraws from the display market, the supply of the global automotive display industry is also accelerating to focus on leading companies.

However, the reasons why panel companies value the application of Micro LED HUD are not only 1. Its own influence in the global automotive display field, 2. The display characteristics advantages of Micro LED technology itself, 3. The technical coherence advantages of panel companies in combination with TFT glass substrates, etc., but also the advantages of panel companies. Related to "Competition Concerns":

On the one hand, HUD display technologies come in various categories. Especially in the past three years, the sales of HUDs that adopt AR-HUD structures and use DLP or LCOS light valve products have accelerated and have become mainstream from the fringe. This leaves the LCD HUD route dominated by display panel companies facing a long-term market decline or even the possibility of being replaced. On the other hand, some traditional HUD companies have entered the silicon-based Micro LED market; some traditional LED large-screen companies are also trying to enter the vehicle display and silicon-based Micro LED market; LED pixelated headlights have blurred the boundaries between LED lighting companies and vehicle display companies... These new competitive factors have made the competition for vehicle displays, especially HUDs, more complicated. Therefore, panel companies also need a wider technical path layout to achieve upgrading and differentiation of supply capabilities.

From a technical perspective, Micro LED HUD is based on glass substrate, with a 6-14-inch panel, and has good upstream and downstream inheritance and correlation with the LCD HUD category. "Micro LED HUD is more like a product where LCD technology fully integrates light emission and light control, and it also significantly improves the shortcomings of LCD HUD in terms of brightness, contrast, color, etc." Industry insiders believe that replacing LCD HUD with Micro LED HUD in the future may be a technology path choice that will help panel companies occupy the HUD market advantage.

Silicon-based or glass-based, how does Micro LED HUD compete for the future?

While panel display companies are paying attention to Micro LED HUD, another type of company is also paying attention to this "new application": for example, recently, Huayinxin has once again achieved a breakthrough in the field of Micro LED micro-display technology - launching a new self-developed direct display Micro LED module. The module has a display size of 0.4 inches, a resolution of 480*270, 129,600 pixels, a brightness of over 25,000cd/㎡, a contrast ratio of 100,000:1, and a minimum chip unit size and pixel pitch of only 18 μm. It can be widely used in AR and automotive head-up displays (HUD).

From the perspective of technical characteristics, silicon-based Mic ro LED is undoubtedly smaller in size and more extreme in performance. For example, the 0.69-inch silicon-based Micro LED displayed by Digital Optical Core can realize native 4K projection display. This makes it possible to rely on silicon-based Micro LED technology to realize HUD displays and even more compact HUD displays that take up less space based on optical waveguide technology.

From a technical competition perspective, silicon-based Micro LED is not only a competitor to traditional LCD XR or LCD HUD products, but also a "strong competitor" to silicon-based light valve products such as DLP and LCOS. And this competition covers broad markets such as HUD, XR, digital headlights, and projectors. However, the current layout of different panel display companies is very different as to whether to get involved in silicon-based micro-displays: For example, BOE and Samsung have built silicon-based OLED production lines, and it should be a "technological smooth road" to get involved in silicon-based Micro LED in the future; however, other panel display companies, For example, Innolux or AUO seem to be more optimistic about glass-based Micro LED applications.

And from the perspective of driving technology, the electrical characteristics provided by silicon substrates may not be replaced by high-temperature polysilicon TFTs, especially at the inch and sub-inch levels.

Therefore, there is still the possibility of a major technical "contest" whether the future of Micro LED HUD will be a silicon-based sub-inch panel, or a several-inch scale, a glass-based panel with an application architecture similar to that of LCD HUD, or an inch-level panel supported by high-temperature polysilicon TFT. Its main decisive factors include key performance indicators such as brightness and resolution (products with large substrates are easier to achieve high brightness and high resolution in the initial stage), as well as long-term performance. Discuss the cost differences and form differences of different technologies.

To sum up, the application of Micro LED micro-displays in HUD has become a hot topic pursued by the industry. The glass-based Micro LED products of panel companies are taking the lead; however, the silicon-based Micro LEDs of other micro-display companies are not without opportunities. The industry believes that in the future, HUD will be popularized across all vehicle models and will evolve in tandem with smart driving technology. It is not even ruled out that both the driver and passenger seats will have HUDs. This is a business worth tens of billions of dollars: it may not be “huge” in terms of the entire size of the two major industries, the display and automobile industries, but for the core vehicle display value of smart driving and the evolution of vehicle display application technology, it is urgently needed and a must-have for related companies.