Garmin made the world's first microLED smartwatch, then quietly dropped the technology from its flagship a year later. That much is settled. What is not settled is whether microLED is done on wrists, and the company that actually builds the panels says it isn't.
On October 29, during AUO's third quarter earnings call, chairman Paul Peng told investors that high-end microLED watches remain under "continuous development with customers." That is the language of an active program, not a closed one. He also said AUO is seeing increased interest in microLED displays generally, with the fastest growth coming from transparent automotive panels.
That reads very differently from the version of this story that has been circulating since September, when the Fenix 9 arrived without a microLED option and the assumption became that the technology had been quietly retired from watches for good.
What AUO Actually Said
The watch line was one piece of a call that was mostly about pain. AUO posted third quarter revenue of NT$66.875 billion, about $2.1 billion, down 4.3 percent year over year and below its own guidance. Net loss attributable to shareholders was NT$2.495 billion, roughly $76.7 million, or a loss of NT$0.33 per share, a swing from a profit the previous quarter. Gross margin fell to 10.1 percent.
The display business is where the damage sat. That segment ran a negative 8.5 percent operating margin while the company's mobility and vertical operations stayed marginally profitable. Notebook panel demand dropped 18 percent year over year, which AUO blamed on memory and CPU cost inflation pushing laptop prices up 30 to 40 percent.
So when Peng talks up microLED, he is talking about the part of the business that still has room to grow. He described the company's cost plan as halving microLED production costs every two years, and pointed to a Gen 4.5 high-resolution line due next year, with meaningful output ramping from the second half of 2027. His guidance on the business itself was that microLED revenue should grow several-fold within one to two years.
Those are not the words of a supplier watching its watch customer walk away. They are the words of a supplier that needs the next generation to land.
The Car Gets There First
Here is where microLED is already shipping: cars. AUO supplied the two transparent microLED displays in the cockpit of Peugeot's RCZ Vision concept, which was shown at the Paris Motor Show. Peng named transparent automotive displays as the fastest growing part of the microLED business.
Digitimes read the quarter as "AUO's microLED setback in smartwatches, comeback in Peugeot cockpit," which is a fair summary of the shape of it. The wrist has stalled. The dashboard has not.
That framing matters for anyone waiting on a microLED Fenix, because automotive volume is what pays for panel development. A display technology that generates revenue in cars has a much better chance of surviving long enough to get thin enough and cheap enough for a watch than one that only ever sold into a $1,999 halo product.
Garmin's Side Hasn't Changed
None of this means Garmin is reversing course. Its position, given to DC Rainmaker when the Fenix 9 launched, was that microLED "is an exciting emerging technology that continues to evolve," that it played an important role in the Fenix 8 Pro 51mm, and that Garmin will "look to bring those to the Fenix lineup when they make sense."
The AMOLED it replaced microLED with is genuinely good. The Fenix 9 Pro's 51mm panel is 1.5 inches at 466 by 466 with 3,000 nits, brighter than the Fenix 8 managed and in a thinner case. Samsung has since put a 5,000 nit OLED on a smartwatch, which is more nits than the microLED Fenix 8 Pro ever offered.
That last number is the whole problem in one line. MicroLED's pitch was that it could go brighter than OLED. OLED kept going brighter on its own, and it did it without the trade-offs.
The Three Trade-offs Are Still the Same Three
The reasons Garmin walked are physical, not strategic, and AUO has not claimed any of them are solved yet.
- Thickness. The microLED Fenix 8 Pro was 17.5mm thick against 16.5mm for the AMOLED version of the same 51mm watch. OLED panels carry touch in the display stack. MicroLED did not, so Garmin had to bond a separate touch layer on top.
- Power. Same case, same chip, same battery: the microLED model lasted 10 days in smartwatch mode against 27 for the AMOLED. With always on display the gap was 4 days against 15. MicroLED-Info's arithmetic put the panel at roughly three times the energy draw, mostly lost in a backplane that had not been optimized.
- Price. It launched at $1,999.99, a $700 premium over the equivalent AMOLED watch. It has been cut twice since and now sells for about $1,299, which tells you what demand looked like at full price.
A cheaper, thinner, more efficient panel is exactly what AUO's cost-halving plan is meant to produce. The company has not said a watch-ready second generation exists today, and no customer has announced one.
What Would Have to Happen Before a Fenix 10
Three things, roughly in order of how much they matter.
Integrated touch. Until microLED panels carry touch in the stack, every microLED watch pays a thickness penalty that AMOLED watches do not. AUO has been working on this for years and it is the single clearest technical gate.
A backplane that doesn't waste the efficiency. The theoretical advantage of microLED is more light per watt. That advantage only appears once the driving silicon stops burning most of the power, which is where the Fenix 8 Pro's numbers went wrong.
A price that undercuts AMOLED. At $1,299 for a display that offers no real world brightness advantage over a 3,000 nit OLED in sunlight, buyers are paying for the technology rather than the experience.
UBI Research's read on when this comes together commercially for watches was 2028. AUO's own Gen 4.5 line timing, ramping through 2027, is consistent with that.
Bottom Line
MicroLED did not fail on the wrist, and it has not been abandoned there either. Garmin parked it because a 3,000 nit AMOLED in a thinner, cheaper, longer lasting watch made the trade-offs pointless for one generation, and AUO is now telling investors the watch program is still alive with customers while the automotive side pays the bills in the meantime.
If you want the display technology today, the Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED is still on sale and cheaper than it has ever been, at the cost of about 17 days of battery life and a millimeter of case. It is listed around $1,299 depending on the day. If you want a Fenix that gets microLED without those costs, the honest answer is that nobody has announced one, and the company that would supply it is pointing at 2027 for the manufacturing and 2028 for the market.
For now the Fenix 9 Pro is the better watch, and the absence of microLED is a smaller deal than the story around it suggested. It is also widely discounted right now, which never hurts.
Sources: AUO's third quarter 2026 earnings call of 29 October 2026 and AUO's investor conference materials; BigGo Finance's full recap of the AUO Q3 2026 earnings call (revenue, net loss, segment margins, Gen 4.5 line timing); MicroLED-Info's summary of the same call including Peng's comment that high-end watches are under "continuous development with customers"; Digitimes' October 29 report on AUO's microLED position in smartwatches and the Peugeot RCZ Vision cockpit; OLED-Info and MicroLED-Info's reporting on Garmin's Fenix 9 display decision and Garmin's own statement, including the Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED specifications and current $1,299 price; Garmin's Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED product page and launch pricing; MicroLED-Info's analysis of the Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED power consumption; and UBI Research's microLED smartwatch commercialization timeline. AUO's call is the primary source for the watch program comment; no customer of AUO has confirmed an upcoming microLED watch, so treat the timing as AUO's own expectation rather than a product announcement.
