It surprises me that microLED's are limited to only the big players.

At least from the outside, it appears the equipment to cut LED dies up, then place them on sheets of glass in an alternating R-G-B pattern, then sandwich another piece of glass on top, with both pieces of glass having row/column ITO conductors on, doesn't look really costly.

Sure - it's more than a hobbiest could do in a garage, but any reasonably funded university lab would have the equipment to do that.

Certainly less complex than OLED if you are starting from scratch.

Hence, I really don't see what is stopping there being a flurry of startups trying to get into the microLED screen business.

In fact, I forsee the hardest thing for a startup would be the row/column driver IC's, which I don't think the incumbent players will sell to you.