What Display Daily thinks: Samsung Electronics and LG Display released second quarter financials, and while they paint a less gloomy picture than the Q1’23 numbers, they don’t really give any credence to the likelihood of a second half of 2023 rebound.
LG is restructuring or repositioning itself, and has managed to steady its financials through operational maneuvers. In other words, the general market conditions, challenging as they have been, continue to remain challenging, but LG is working around it. Display Daily can be very bullish about LG’s strategic changes as an organization, particularly in terms of its adoption of service and subscription models for its TVs and appliances, but it is one thing for the company to succeed in Korea, and it is a much greater undertaking to translate that model in other regions.
Samsung, on the other hand, is uniquely positioned to benefit from the launch of new Galaxy phones, watches, and tablets. Samsung can be its own best customer. Even today’s announcement about TCL CSOT suppling 98-inch panels for Samsung’s 8K TVs goes some way towards ensuring that the company can be its own best customer on other models in the Neo QLED 8K TV QNC990 series 75 and 85 inch models, meaning that the company can fortify its own product lines with other companies panels as long as it continues to feed its other lines, where it is, again, its own best customer.
So, on volumes alone, Samsung is the number one premium smartphone company in the world, and it is the number one premium TV company in the world. As long as it can feed premium product SKUs into its distribution channels, and maintain its market leading positions, it can continue to weather lagging consumer demand in other sectors.
It’s not really an indication of the real state of the market, but it works for Samsung. It seems to be working for LG and TCL CSOT as they feed the beast, at least for now, but again, there is not enough data or information to warrant anything but caution about the general direction of demand in the second half of 2023.
