How far are we from domestic brands launching OLED TVs?

About ten years ago, LCD TVs sounded the clarion call for LCD to completely replace CRT TVs by virtue of their magic power of shaving off the "big butts" of the TVs in most family living rooms overnight. But when OLED TVs with better display effects came to replace LCD TVs, things did not seem to go so smoothly.

Why didn’t OLED become popular?

OLED is undoubtedly a major theme in the development of the TV industry after LCD. The advantages of OLED screens are self-explanatory. The self-luminous characteristics allow OLED TVs to have far superior contrast, color gamut and other parameters than traditional LCD TVs. And because the backlight structure is eliminated, OLED also makes it possible for flat-panel TVs to be thinner and even multi-format. It can be said to be the best of both worlds for future TVs. So much so that the first TV that received a perfect score from the internationally renowned review organization Review.com was an OLED TV.

Unfortunately, the road for OLED TVs to reach consumers is not smooth. The OLED light-emitting material has very poor antioxidant ability after being powered on, and the vacuum glass sealing needs to be combined with the LTPS TFT substrate, which means that the cost of OLED applications in large-size fields will remain high. Coupled with many unfavorable factors such as high investment costs in the production process and low early yields, the high price is a stumbling block to the popularization of OLED TVs.

When LG's first 55-inch OLED TV 55EM970V was first released, it was priced at nearly 100,000 yuan. Even after LG significantly reduced the price of OLED TVs to the 20,000 yuan range, it was still difficult for ordinary consumers to have sufficient market competitiveness compared to LCD TVs of the same size.

The trend of domestic manufacturers entering the OLED market will change

Just as domestic mobile phone brands are the main force in lowering the overall selling price of smartphones, the popularization of OLED TVs also requires domestic TV companies to develop their own unique value in the market.

In fact, OLED, as an important direction for the future development of television, is not uncommon among domestic TV brands. In the early days, Haier and Changhong both launched their own OLED TV products, and Skyworth, which now occupies a leading position in the flat-panel TV market share, has always been a firm promoter and supporter of OLED. From the perspective of production and research and development, the increasing maturity of OLED display technology has also created favorable conditions for the further popularization of OLED TVs.

When Skyworth released its first curved OLED TV in April 2014, it stated that the yield rate of OLED panels from its strategic partner LGD increased from the initial 5% to over 50% in a short period of time, accelerating the mass production of OLED products by half a year. According to information disclosed by LG Display's OLED business unit last year, the yield rate of FHD OLED TV panels has reached over 80%, which is on par with the yield rate of LCDs.

The maturity of technology and the reduction of costs will naturally make OLED TVs more affordable.

Take Skyworth as an example. The price of its 55-inch 4K resolution OLED organic TV in the market can be maintained at a minimum of RMB 15,000 at this stage, and it is favored by high-end users. As a technological iteration product, the price of OLED TV is currently 20% to 30% higher than that of high-end LCD TVs of the same specifications. This has also enabled Skyworth Group to set a goal of selling 200,000 OLED products in 2016, and it is expected that OLED products will become the mainstream of the color TV market by 2019 at the latest.

OLED is a carrier of better technology and replacing LCD is just around the corner

Although faced with the high price threshold of early OLED products, many manufacturers have regarded quantum dot technology and even laser TV as the next replacement for LCD. However, OLED's outstanding performance in screen display effects still cannot make people ignore its dominant position in the TV industry.

In September 2015, nearly 30 upstream and downstream industry chains and research institutions in the color TV industry, including LG Electronics, domestic TV manufacturer Skyworth, and distributors Suning and Gome, jointly established the "China OLED Display Industry Alliance", and the OLED market showed a trend of "banding together".

At the end of last year, at the "OLED Future Product Summit Forum" held in Shenzhen, Skyworth announced the launch of a new generation of OLED organic TVs combined with HDR technology, allowing people to see that HDR can not only extend the life cycle of ordinary LCD TVs, but also make OLED TVs better.

People have never stopped exploring for better display effects on TVs, but OLED is different from the PDP plasma or 3D display technology that has appeared before. OLED does not make TVs more complicated, but focuses on the most basic aspects of TVs. The ultra-thin, curved, 4K, HDR and other features that are popular in the market can also be better achieved with the help of OLED.

Not long ago, Philips also announced that it would officially abandon 3D TVs and, like LG, would focus on OLED. With the general trend of the industry and the fact that domestic TV manufacturers are gradually breaking down the "chronic disease" of high prices for OLED TVs, we have reason to believe that the OLED era of home TVs is accelerating.

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.