A senior Samsung Electronic TV business official reaffirmed plans that the company would not be making OLED TVs in the near future, and will be focusing on quantum dot (QD) TVs next year, according to a Korea Herald report.
“I have always said it would take two to three years to consider OLED TV. But now when little progress has been made on its tricky production and high costs since our suspension back in 2013, I wouldn’t say OLED is our future direction,” said Samsung Electronics president and TV chief Kim Hyun-seok on Tuesday at a press conference held at the company’s headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province.
Despite OLED’s better picture quality and color gamut performance compared to conventional LCDs, adoption of OLED panels in TV has been slow due to higher costs of production and low yield rates in larger panels,
The Korean manufacturer is currently a leader in small OLED panels, such as those for smartphones, wearable or other mobile devices. The company has recently sealed a deal with Apple to supply OLED screens in upcoming iPhones.
Samsung is a market leader in smaller OLED. It has recently inked a deal with Apple to supply OLED screens for next-generation iPhones.
Yet, in the TV sector, Samsung has been investing most of its resources in improving LCD TV quality. Its latest SHUD TVs feature quantum dot technology that use infinitely small particles to emit a different color of light depending on size.
“It is also likely that new technology like quantum dot could progress faster than OLED,” he said.
Samsung claims that its quantum dot TV already outpaces current OLED TVs in terms of picture quality and brightness, even though it is still disputable which display is the better display technology.
The Korean manufacturer intends to launch QD TV models in Europe and Brazil in the next few months as big sporting events such as the Euro 2016 and the Rio Summer Olympics in August take place.
