Samsung has confirmed that it has no plans to introduced an OLED TV in the near future.
President of visual display, Kim Hyun-seok, said this week, “[N]ow when little progress has been made on [OLED’s] tricky production and high costs since our suspension back in 2013, I wouldn’t say OLED is our future direction”.
Kim continued, saying that LCD quantum dot TVs “could progress faster than OLED.” He also claimed that Samsung’s SUHD TVs are ahead of OLED models in terms of colour and brightness.
This year, Samsung Display has confirmed that it is working on large OLED panels (Samsung “Will Proceed” With Large OLEDs) and has been linked to a $3 billion investment in an OLED TV panel factory (Samsung to Invest in Large OLED). Kim’s statements are contrary to this news, but it could be that Samsung simply doesn’t want to hurt its QD-LCD TV sales while people wait for OLED sets.
Analyst Comment
I have to say, if I was a betting man, I’d place a stake that the real reason for Samsung not being interested, now, in large OLED may well be because of the high risk and huge investment needed to make it happen. Samsung overall is clearly looking to areas other than displays and electronics to develop and invest. It certainly won’t help LG to drive the cost of OLEDs down. History has shown that it’s hard to drive a display technology if there is only one supplier. (BR)
