(Author: Judy Lin, Chief Editor, LEDinside)

Senior LG executives spoke about the company’s OLED TV market strategy at a press conference hosted at The Humble Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan earlier Tuesday.

The Korean company is a heavy investor in large sized OLED TVs of 55-inch to 65-inch, a sector where most electronic manufacturers including Samsung have called quits, due to yield issues.

“We are mostly focused on the 55-inch OLED TV market,” explained Peter Lo, CE Sales Department, Vice President, LG Electronics Taiwan. “In the entire TV sector, 55” and above displays comprise about 40% market share.”

Excluding show girls from left to right:James Cheng, CE Dealier Dept. Director, LG Electronics, Jason Kim,President of LG Taiwan office, Peter Lo, CE Sales Dept. Vice President, Sang Kyun Kim, HE PM Team Director. (All photos courtesy of LEDinside)

Center and right: James Cheng, CE Dealier Dept. Director, LG Electronics, Jason Kim,President of LG Taiwan office.

OLED TVs dark contrast wins over a movie director

Unsurprisingly, the OLED TV 4K model to be launched in Taiwan is a large 55” screened TV, featuring perfect black displays.

“LCD screens are unable to achieve perfect black because the LED backlight module is always lit on, while OLED panels are self-luminous,” said Frankie Chen, Marketing Assistant Manager, LG Electronics Taiwan Taipei.

Contrast between OLED and LCD TV grayscale performance of respectively 20 stops and 14 stops.

OLEDs can individually light up pixel cells, which gives it an advantage over existing LCD technology when it comes to creating darker contrasts. OLED TVs can display 20 stops of black compared to the mere 14 stops found in LCD TVs, added Chen.

The difference in brightness and darkness contrast might be subtle to the average consumer eyes, and not enough to convince most consumers to splurge NT$ 100,000 (US $3,099) on a typical OLED TV set, but for movie director Yi-An Lou OLED TV’s high color gamut performance makes post-production much easier.

Top: A scene from "White Lies, Black Lies" shown on LG's OLED TV 4K. Bottom: Director Yi-An Lou talking abuot the merits of OLED TVs and how the difference in black gradient performance on movie lighting during post-production.

“It’s very hard to see details in a very dark movie scene with conventional LCD TVs, such as in my recently directed suspense movie ‘White Lies, Black Lies’” said Lou. “We usually have to reedit lighting in movies during post-production because (LCD) TV does not support certain darkness, but if we use OLED TVs we won’t need to reedit the lighting.”

So far LG OLED TVs might find a market in the movie industry. LG also prides itself in being the first company to support two Ultra High Definition (UHD) HDR TV standards the HDR 10 and Dolby Vision, as a future-proof strategy so its TVs will be able to support all future video content specs to be released on the market, said Sang Kyun Kim, Director, HE PM Team, LG Electronics.

Frankie Chen, Marketing Assistant Manager, LG Electronics Taiwan Taipei being interviewed by Taiwanese media.

Additionally, the new OLED TV has acquired Ultra HD Premium certification from UHD Alliance, which signifies the TVs have a resolution of at least above 4K, BT70-BT2020, and a bit parameter of 8-bit to 10-bit and above, explained Chen.

The company has not confirmed the retail price for the 4K OLED TV to be launched in Taiwan yet, but is vying the mid-high end TV sector with this new product, said Chen. However, the company will slash OLED TV prices in Taiwan by about 30% this year, which would bring significant improvements in C/P ratio, explained Peter Lo, CE Sales Department, Vice President, LG Electronics Taiwan.

A showgirl standing next to LG's OLED TV 4K.

Future developments in OLED TV sector

Globally OLED TVs comprise a very small market share of about 300,000 TV sets out of 230 million TV sets sold annually in 2015, said the Sang Kyun Kim, Director, HE PM Team, LG Electronics Taiwan. The company aims to boost OLED TV set sales volume to 1 million or more worldwide by 2016.

Asked whether other electronic manufacturers will be releasing similar products in the near future to help propel the market penetration of OLED TVs, Peter Lo, the company’s Taiwan branch Vice President of CE Sales Department, pointed out Panasonic plans to release a 65” OLED TV in Europe soon, Sony is planning to launch similar products, while top four Chinese TV makers intend to release OLED TVs.

In the short term, OLED TVs will not become the main revenue source for LG, but the company remains confident and optimistic that its sharper image and crisp color performance will eventually win over consumers.