UBI Research forecast that OLED TV will become the dominant technology in the premium TV market by 2020, when it believes that the technology will take 68.1% (note the accuracy! Man. Ed.) of the premium market by that time. At an event in Korea, Lee Chung-hoon, CEO of UBI, said that the most important factor will be price and it believes that OLED panel prices (quoted at $720 in Q2 2016) will be under $500 by 2020.
Lee believes that the competition from QLED will be difficult and that would limit the penetration. However, by 2025, the company thinks that the mainstream of the market will be solution-processed OLED and QLED, although it expects WRGB OLED to remain the premium technology.
Analyst Comment
I have been saying since at least 2010 (Volume 17 #22 in a front page article) that OLED could be ‘the flat panel Trinitron’. Well, actually, I first said “Samsung’s Trinitron”, but because of its manufacturing difficulties with its approach to large OLED manufacture, it looks more likely to be LG’s Trinitron. By that, I meant a TV technology that clearly differentiated the company to consumers in store. With LCD, to date, the differences between the best LCD TVs have been small (although Sony’s high end LCDs have been getting some good reactions from friends of mine recently).
I don’t believe that Samsung would back the analysis from UBI as it publicly remains committed to quantum dots and it’s hard to imagine that it will be prepared to easily give up its market share in TV. (BR)
