Facing Skyworth's paper-thin OLED TV, can Hisense, which sticks to ULED, have the last laugh?

At present, the most intense competition in TV panel technology is between the two camps of OLED and ULED. As leaders in China's color TV industry, Skyworth and Hisense inevitably have huge differences in technology schools.

As the representative of OLED in China, Skyworth has always insisted on taking OLED technology as its main strategic direction. It has successively launched HDR technology combined with OLED organic TVs, new OLED TVs with AR concepts, and China's first independently developed OLED TV. For a time, consumers were deeply impressed by the superb display effect of OLED.

On the other hand, in contrast to Skyworth's focus on OLED technology, Hisense has been vigorously promoting its own ULED TVs, trying to compete with OLED TVs through lower prices and more accurate market positioning.

However, facing the nearly mature OLED technology, can ULED still maintain its previous calm attitude?

OLED, a breakthrough technology, is destined to change the industry

The full name of OLED is organic light-emitting diode. Unlike traditional LED, OLED has the characteristic of self-luminescence. On the one hand, it does not require backlight support, and it is more competitive in contrast, brightness, color gamut and viewing angle.

At the same time, OLED does not need to be fixed in a glass panel like LED. Because it does not require backlight support, OLED has the advantages of being lighter, simpler in structure, and lower in power consumption compared to traditional LCD.

On the afternoon of April 12th, Beijing time, Skyworth, a representative of domestic OLED, released Wallpaper TV, a TV of the future. Taking advantage of the self-luminous and flexible characteristics of OLED, the thickness of the screen is further compressed to be as thin as paper, and the magnetically adsorbed screen looks like a mural when attached to the wall.

Liu Tangzhi, president of Skyworth Group's color TV business unit, believes that Skyworth has been promoting OLED for a long time and unremittingly. From the perspective of the industrial chain, more and more brands are joining the OLED camp, breaking the situation where Chinese local color TVs lack independent OLED intellectual property rights.

ULED is still LCD in nature, but regional dimming is worth affirming

However, compared with those advantages that are enough to change the industry, the reason why OLED cannot be widely popularized in the market today is more straightforward, that is, "price".

For an emerging technology, it is naturally difficult to control the yield rate and cost, so the price has become an enemy that must be faced in the OLED market promotion strategy. However, it is precisely because OLED cannot be popularized on a large scale today that it gives traditional LCD panels a chance to breathe.

As an upgraded product of LED, ULED is advertised to use new backlight technology to ensure that it is not inferior to OLED in terms of color saturation, contrast and brightness.

After actually using it, I found that the so-called ULED is just a quantum dot backlight enhancement, and a layer of quantum dot material film is covered on the ordinary LED backlight. In essence, it is still an LCD screen, and ULED still needs backlight and liquid crystal glass, but the backlight has additional regional dimming.

Through the regional dimming technology, the screen can be changed from a whole into 240 blocks, and each block can independently control the backlight brightness, so the contrast can reach the level of one million to one.

But even so, ULED still cannot break through the limitations of LCD. Compared with the self-luminous characteristics of OLED, ULED can only be said to be barely close in terms of contrast. What's more, Samsung actually proposed a method to adjust the brightness of each local area of ​​the backlight according to the input image signal as early as 2006.

For domestic consumers, ULED is just a dessert before OLED becomes popular. However, at present, Hisense's 65-inch ULED TV is priced at around 16,000 yuan, which is nearly twice the price of similar LED TVs on the market.

Hisense's efforts behind ULED's optimization of backlight are worthy of recognition, but now it seems that the emergence of ULED is more like a concept hype. With the large-scale price cuts on online sales platforms, it can be seen that this technology does not have as high a premium as imagined.

Panel manufacturers hold the upstream of the color TV industry hostage and determine the product trend

For Hisense, it is clear that OLED is the future development direction. Even if LED is made into ULED or other forms, it cannot get rid of the limitations of traditional LCD. The inherent physical defect of LCD TV screens that require backlighting is unavoidable, and factors such as afterimage, response speed, tailing time, and unrealistic colors cannot be changed.

So why does Hisense still stick to ULED, which has no future?

Fundamentally speaking, whether or not to enter the OLED camp is not a decision that a single TV manufacturer can make alone. What is involved is the entire product supply chain.

For example, Skyworth, a representative of domestic OLED TVs, has been able to achieve such results because of its capital cooperation with LG Display and the joint venture panel factory in Guangzhou. Therefore, Skyworth has a relative advantage in acquiring OLED display technology.

Therefore, Hisense does not want to make OLED, but its panel supplier is not as strong as LG Display in the field of OLED technology. Even if it is forced to make TVs with OLED screens, the cost and effect will be greatly reduced.

ULED has limited potential and the industry faces a choice

There was once a saying that "experts buy plasma, laymen buy LCD." Maybe this saying now seems to have a hint of black humor, but it became the fuse for Panasonic's failure in its big bet on plasma TVs.

The first LCD monitors performed poorly in terms of black and contrast, and had severe tailing when displaying dynamic images, which made everyone believe that plasma was the future of television. Panasonic was no exception and always stuck to the plasma camp, but this persistence eventually led to Panasonic's cumulative losses of about 1.5 trillion yen in the two years ending in 2012, and it has been seriously damaged to this day.

Now Hisense seems to be facing this choice. As OLED technology continues to mature, whether to continue to stick to ULED or to follow the trend and switch to OLED will become a T-junction that determines the fate of the company.

For Hisense, ULED may still bring very considerable benefits in the short term, but in essence, traditional LCD panels are being replaced by OLED. Even if ULED continues to innovate, it still cannot escape the fate of technological change.

Perhaps Hisense will eventually join the OLED camp, but before that, I believe Hisense will fully develop the limited potential of traditional LCDs.

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.