Can Samsung TV, which is determined not to produce OLED, still gain a foothold in the future TV market?

If the industry's most important mobile phone screen supplier is also the world's leading TV manufacturer in terms of sales, then it is natural for the display technologies of large and small screens to be interconnected and developed together.

However, when this situation happened to Samsung, it seemed no longer logical.

The launch of Apple iPhone X continues to strengthen the preference of today's smartphone industry for OLED displays. Almost all mainstream mobile phone brands, including Apple, Huawei, and OV, use OLED screens from Samsung. This Korean company also always occupies more than 90% of the market share in the field of mobile phone OLED screens.

At the same time, with a share of over 26% in the global TV market in 2017, Samsung's performance in the TV field is now in full swing. However, when it comes to OLED technology, which is currently favored by most mainstream TV manufacturers and has rich experience in the field of mobile phone screens, Samsung, which has also worked hard on OLED TVs, does not intend to look back today.

Not long ago, foreign media revealed that Samsung has developed QD-OLED large-size TV panels that integrate its own quantum dot display technology, but then Han Jong-hee, head of Samsung's TV and display department, came out to clarify and denied the rumor, and even gave an absolute answer of "Never" to the so-called plan to launch OLED TVs.

It can be seen that even though OLED is regarded as the "future technology" of TV displays, Samsung is still not interested in the application of OLED on large screens.

The rejection of OLED TVs stems from the determination not to pay for immature products

The improvement in display quality of self-luminous OLED TVs compared to traditional LCD TVs is obvious, but the reason why Samsung insists on rejecting OLED TVs is naturally the difficult-to-balance relationship between the burn-in of OLED displays, the short life of related organic materials, and the high price and high cost of the products.

In a public test of short-term afterimages of mainstream TV products conducted by professional audio-visual media Rtings at the end of last year, all OLED TVs failed to obtain passing scores.

To the extent that some TV sellers will have to ask consumers whether they have the habit of watching content with fixed pictures before selling OLED TVs, and then decide whether to recommend OLED products.

Combined with the fact that LG Display currently has the sole share of large-size OLED display panel supply, coupled with production capacity bottlenecks and yield issues, the cost and market price of OLED TVs remain high.

Statistics show that the current average unit price of OLED TVs is 2 to 3 times that of LCD TVs of the same size, and starting at 10,000 yuan is also the pricing rule for most domestic OLED TV products.

Overall, the "incomplete" product and the "high" price may be the important factors that make Samsung still say "no" to OLED TVs today.

QLED is struggling to reach new heights. Will MicroLED be a better choice for high-end TVs?

Samsung, which is gradually moving away from OLED TVs, has chosen to be the first to launch QLED TVs equipped with quantum dot technology in the upcoming "post-LCD era" to face industry changes.

QLED display technology that incorporates quantum dots certainly has better display effects than traditional LCD technology, but QLED TVs, which are still based on LCD TVs, obviously do not give Samsung enough market competitiveness over OLED TVs from its competitors, which have more thorough technological iterations.

Obviously, Samsung itself is aware of this problem. Therefore, after denying the possibility of returning to OLED TVs, Han Jong-hee, head of Samsung's TV and display division, continued to state that it will insist on promoting the "dual-track strategy" of developing quantum dot TVs and MicroLED TVs. MicroLED TVs are Samsung's answer to the competition from OLED TVs.

So, is MicroLED a better choice for high-end TVs?

In terms of technical principles, like OLED, MicroLED can also form a display panel with self-luminous pixels. However, since the inorganic gallium nitride is used to replace the organic matter in the original OLED display technology, the brightness of MicroLED TVs is not only higher than that of OLED TVs, but the problems of short lifespan and screen burn-in no longer exist. It can be called the "perfect version of OLED".

Unfortunately for Samsung, which is betting on MicroLED TVs, MicroLED is a new technology that requires combining millions of pixel-sized LED light structures into panels that can be used in TVs. Its production cost and difficulty even exceed those of OLED panels at this stage.

For example, Sony tried to produce a MicroLED display in 2012 that required 6.22 million independent LED structures. However, it was troubled by excessive energy consumption and extremely low yield rates, and ultimately its desire for large-scale mass production was shattered. Today, Sony's high-end TVs have become a member of the OLED camp.

In addition, although Apple has recently completed the acquisition of MicroLED display manufacturer LuxVue, the industry generally believes that Apple's MicroLED layout will be concentrated on small-screen devices such as Apple Watch, which has no effective reference significance for judging the prospects of large-size MicroLED TVs.

The only good news for the development of MicroLED TVs is that Samsung demonstrated The Wall, a modular concept TV with MicroLED display technology with a size of up to 146 inches at the beginning of this year, and plans to launch it on the market in August.

However, for such an ultra-large product, some industry insiders believe that Samsung's difficulty lies in the fact that the MicroLED display technology it possesses is currently unable to achieve a pixel density sufficient to accommodate 4K resolution on the screen size of common TVs on the market.

Of course, the more critical point is that compared with OLED TVs, the current high cost of MicroLED TVs will make it have an unrealistic market price.

Anyway, there is no plan to popularize it on a large scale to users right now, so just make a product that most consumers can’t afford without even looking at the price. This may be the subtext of Samsung’s launch of the 146-inch MicroLED TV.

The distance from LCD to MicroLED is too far, and Samsung TV is being squeezed by the OLED camp

There is no doubt that there is nothing wrong with Samsung's judgment and decision to abandon OLED TVs from a technical perspective, but whether innovative technology can be implemented in products that enter ordinary people's homes is mainly determined by the choices of users and the market. From this point of view, we have to doubt whether Samsung's choice is correct.

According to data from industry organization HIS, after just two years of development, OLED TV sales have jumped from just 1.1% of the global TV market in 2015 to 4.5% in 2017, a four-fold increase.

At the same time, many mainstream TV companies at home and abroad, including Sony, LG, Skyworth, Konka, Changhong, and Philips, have successively joined the OLED TV camp. Correspondingly, Samsung's currently vigorously promoted quantum dot technology has only left the domestic TV company TCL to form a situation of two companies huddling together for warmth.

The continuous growth of the OLED TV camp has undoubtedly accelerated the improvement of upstream OLED panel production capacity, yield rate and other issues. In addition, LG is trying to use special algorithms to prevent afterimages, making OLED TVs more popular than ever before. As a result, Samsung is further facing the situation of being besieged by competitors who have OLED products.

An analysis from South Korea's Hi Securities shows that Samsung Display's display panel business has been completely suppressed by LG Display's OLED products in the high-end TV market with a price of more than US$2,500, and its market share has dropped to 10%.

After Sony decided to return to OLED TV in 2017, the market share of its high-end OLED TVs priced at more than US$3,000 soared from 0 to 44% in just one year. Such a huge market dividend may be a direct or indirect reason for Samsung, the global leader in TV market sales, to rush to come up with MicroLED products, which are far less mature than OLED, to boost its high-end product line.

It is also worth noting that, especially for most manufacturers in the OLED TV camp, the current hybrid approach of "LCD + OLED" multi-technology product lines can better take into account different levels of the market at the same time.

Take Samsung TV's old rival Sony as an example. After setting a benchmark in the TV market of 10,000 yuan and below with its X8000, X9000 and other series of products using LCD panels, OLED products have successfully become the driving force for its BRAVIA TVs to impact the high-end market. In comparison, Samsung, which now only has "LCD improved" QLED TVs, lacks the flexibility to focus on multi-level markets.

What can be clearly felt is that in the process of transition from LCD or quantum dot TVs to MicroLED TVs, Samsung today is experiencing the torment and test of having the status of a market leader in the TV field, but having a "gap" in core technologies that have real popular value and industry-leading significance.

The wave of OLED TVs is coming, accelerating the arrival of the "post-LCD era". During this period, Samsung's QLED TV has not been successful in "extending the life" of LCD, and MicroLED TV is still far away and difficult to reach. OLED seems to be the reasonable and only answer to this dilemma, but Samsung is willing to take the risk of the "good horse" turning into a "dead horse" and vows to never turn back.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.