The display industry is entering a new phase in which the old race over specifications is giving way to a claim on user-centred value, Hisense’s marketing chief Liu Weijie argued at a company event on 19 January. Liu framed the shift around a technical pivot: the move from single‑colour backlights that rely on blue LEDs plus color conversion, to true RGB colour light sources produced by RGB‑Mini LED arrays. He described this as a structural change that resolves a long‑standing trade‑off between picture quality, energy efficiency and eye health.
Liu argued that single‑colour backlights — even advanced variants such as QD‑Mini LED and SQD‑Mini LED — remain constrained by the 'mix then control' logic: blue light excites colour filters or quantum dots, and light control is layered on afterwards. That two‑step approach, he said, forces compromises and leads to energy loss and colour distortion. By contrast, RGB backlights output the three primary colours directly, enabling simultaneous control of light and colour and delivering wider BT.2020 gamuts and lower blue light emissions.
The technical uplift, Liu said, explains why RGB‑Mini LED has taken roughly two decades to commercialise: mastering the algorithmic complexity of synchronised light‑and‑colour control, stabilising novel emission chips and scaling production represent steep engineering and supply‑chain hurdles. Those hurdles, he argued, are not incidental but form the 'moat' that separates early movers from followers. He cited international incumbents’ recent interest — naming Samsung and Sony among those following the RGB route — as evidence that the technology is reaching an inflection point.
Beyond the device level, Liu framed the advancement as an industrial story. Chinese companies, he said, have used full value‑chain integration — from chip design and patents through algorithm optimisation — to accumulate deep barriers to entry, shifting competition from single product breakthroughs to ecosystem leadership. That, he suggested, marks a departure from decades in which Chinese suppliers were largely seen as imitators of western and Korean display champions.
Commercial signals reinforce Liu’s case. Hisense itself has launched RGB‑Mini LED flagship sets this month at accessible price points in China, underscoring the company’s claim that the technology is viable for consumer products rather than niche prototypes. If RGB backlights can be produced at scale and integrated into TV and monitor lines, they could reshape the relative merits of Mini‑LED, OLED and other emissive or transmissive approaches by adding a new dimension of energy and health credentials to colour performance.
The broader stakes extend beyond TVs. Displays are central to smartphones, laptops, professional monitors and public signage; any shift that materially improves gamut, power draw and blue‑light exposure will affect component supply chains, standards bodies and content workflows. Success will depend not only on pixel‑level engineering but on content mastering (HDR pipelines and colour management), manufacturing yields, and whether rivals can match or undercut the incumbents on price and service. For now, Liu’s message is clear: the technical debate is moving from headline numbers to the user experience those numbers enable.