At the start of 2018, Samsung denounced rumors concerning the company’s development of OLED display panels for TVs. Now, however, the CEO of Samsung Display confirms that production it set to begin next year.
The Korean manufacturer Samsung dropped OLED televisions in 2013, when the company failed to produce panels in the quantities required to turn a profit on the investment, instead, focusing on QLED-based TVs.
However, this may have been a misplaced focus as these TVs are have been fighting an uphill battle against the manufacturers who invested early in OLED technology (although Samsung has of course kept pushing QLED as the technology of the future).
During a recent trade show in Seoul, Samsung Display’s CEO Lee Dong-hoon addressed recent rumors (Korean The Bell via Google Translate) that have been going around since CES 2018, where two QD-OLED prototypes allegedly appeared. It is likely that Samsung is investing in this technology in order to compete better with its chief rival LG, which accounts for a large share of the TV market today.
“We are developing technology to prepare large quantum dot organic light emitting diodes (QD-OLEDs),” Dong-hoon bluntly said.
Quantum Dot OLED is a variant of OLED that is said to highlight quantum dots with blue sub-pixels instead of common LEDs. Advantages versus the type of OLED that LG invested in are higher brightness, better viewing angles, and a wider color space.
In other words it’s a done deal that Samsung will begin manufacturing QD-OLED panels during the second half of 2019. Samsung also develops a technology for televisions called Micro-LED, which was also on display at CES.
Unfortunately there are no news as to when either of these new technologies will appear in consumer-oriented products such as TVs and computer monitors.
Image credit: Samsung.