Samsung, LG 'lose confidence' in OLED TV tech
Waiting for an organic telly? Be prepared to wait some more
Don’t expect reasonably priced OLED TVs to hit the market for a fair few years yet. Do, however, expect 4K x 2K Ultra HD LCD TVs to be all the rage in 2013.
So suggests David Hsieh, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, a market watcher. He claims to have detected a change in the mood of those two major display manufacturers, Samsung and LG, the world’s number one and number two telly makers, respectively. Both were, until very recently, dead keen on OLED TV technology.
A year ago, for example, both were aggressively promoting prototype 55in OLED TV sets, first at January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and, later in the first half of 2012, at dedicated events in Europe and Asia.
However, come September’s IFA show in Berlin and then November’s US Thanksgiving holiday sales period, and, according to Hsieh, “Korean panel makers lost some confidence in OLED”. These manufacturers “began to feel that they could not justify a further investment in [production] capacity expansion”, he says.
Two factors have caused this shift from the early part of the year’s enthusiasm to this end-of-year gloom. First, TV sales over the last few months have demonstrated punters’ clear preference for larger but cheaper televisions. Both Samsung and LG were pitching 55in sets, big by most markets’ standards, but priced in the region of $10,000. A fraction of that will buy you a colossal Full HD LCD.
Then there are the lessons Samsung and LG have learned while trying to make big OLED screens: yields are poor. Very poor, in fact. According to Hsieh, fewer than 10 per cent of the OLED panels either company punches out are up to snuff to be used in TVs.
Some glitches that cause picture and colour distortions can be fixed physically and with extra electronics, but even these bandages and Band-Aids only take the total yield to less than 30 per cent of the panels rolling off the production lines.
It doesn't help that both Samsung and LG are suing each other for allegedly stealing their OLED-related intellectual property.
Worse, the process of bonding the layers within OLED panel using glass "solder" - a process called "frit encapsulation" in the trade - introduces fragilities that reduce each finished panel’s effective lifespan. To what degree, the manufacturers can only guess, making it hard to predict the ongoing cost of servicing the few $10,000 OLED TVs they do manage to sell.
Making LCD panels with four times as many pixels per unit area as a 1920 x 1080 set is tricky too, of course, but it’s much more straightforward than making a Full HD OLED TV. Yields are higher and, because they are using the same basic manufacturing process as that employed for existing LCD TVs, it’s easier for vendors to work on increasing that yield.
That, plus punters’ ability to see the clear benefit of an Ultra HD TV over a Full HD TV, says Hsieh, has forced Samsung, LG and others essentially to delay the mass production of OLED TVs until they can punch out big numbers of (working) 4K x 2K versions.
By his estimation, that won’t happen until 2014 at the earliest. In the meantime, OLED TVs will be used largely for demonstration purposes while consumers will be sold 4K x 2K LCD TVs. Those, that is, who don't choose to wait even longer for a decent-size OLED TV than they have already. ®
COMMENTS
Is it just me…
Or have the manufacturers got themselves caught up in their own reality distortion fields?
TVs were (relatively expensive) and the vast majority of people only "upgraded" due to the fact that the old one died.
Then came along digital (or was it thin TVs that didn't look like they were being watched through a Vaseline smear?) and a large chunk of people upgraded in a relatively short space of time.
The manufacturers saw this and assumed that this (one off) rapid upgrade cycle was going to be the new norm only to find out that people really aren't interested in incremental upgrades like FullHD, 3D etc. etc.
They only need to look back 20 years to see there was no "mass upgrade" simply because fasttext, Dolby surround or flat (CRT) screens were introduced - people saw these as features to consider when upgrading, NOT (generally) a reason to upgrade of itself.
Well, plenty of uHD content does exist...just not for TV.
PC games scale. Yes, you would need either a fairly new video card so you can have a Displayport socket, or you could have 2 DVI-D cables ( which goes back several generations, but is much more of a clumsy solution. )
Personally, I hope to see a uHD computer monitor soon. Although, I hope they aren't as ridiculously priced as the 1600s still are. Seriously, you can get a 10" tablet for under $500 that is 2560x1600 but if you want just a 2560x1600 monitor it's over $1000 in most cases:(
Also, the fact that I haven't even seen a hint of a uHD monitor, suggests to me that these screens won't be anywhere near main stream in 2013. People won't care about uHD in large numbers until the price gets fairly close to current screens. ( Both TV and Monitors. ) Typically, the $1,000 mark is when things start to shift.
I could be wrong, and hope I am, but I don't see that happening in the next year.
Yawn.
Even if OLED and 4K x 2K TVs were reasonably priced, there would be little reason for most people to replace their exisiting kit until it dies.
Re: Yawn.
That's true for much consumer electronics. Oh, except for the word "consumer".
So my 28" Widescreen CRT will have to wait a bit longer to be replaced by OLED, or 4K, not that I have even any 720p HD inputs let alone anything more modern!
Seriously it always seems waiting for the next big thing in TV at the moment, I'll keep hold of mine until it goes bang then gets whatever is latets and greatest at that point, though I assume I'll be watching the same old dross...
