It is an indisputable fact that the growth rate of the LCD TV market in China and the world is stagnant or even shrinking. At the same time, as an alternative to LCD TVs, OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) TVs have shown rapid growth and have entered the market.
As a global leader in the LCD panel industry, Samsung is gradually selling some LCD panel factories to ensure more funds and energy can be invested in the OLED industry.
Samsung continues to sell LCD panel factory OLED TV market to speed up
Samsung continues to sell LCD panel factory and switch to OLED industry
Recently, Samsung announced that it will dispose of its 7th generation TFT-LCD (liquid crystal panel) production line equipment by the end of 2016. China's panel makers such as Truly Semiconductor, BOE, and Huaxing Optoelectronics have become potential buyers.
Samsung is not the first to sell its LCD panel factory. In January 2016, Samsung announced that it will sell some of its parts, components, machines and equipment for its fifth-generation TFT-LCD (liquid crystal panel) production line and color filter production line to China's LCD panel manufacturer, Truly Semiconductor.
The reason why Samsung has abandoned the LCD panel factory is because the market demand for LCD panels has been weak, which has already had a rather adverse impact on Samsung. According to the first quarter 2016 financial report of Samsung Electronics, due to the sluggish LCD panel market and the continued decline in sales prices, the operating loss of Samsung's electronic display business in the first quarter was 270 billion won. The early release of Samsung's new flagship mobile phone Galaxy S7 & S7 edge and its strong sales performance have led to a significant increase in Samsung OLED panel business revenue.
Samsung is also supplying OLED panels to other mobile phone manufacturers. Apple is currently negotiating with Samsung Electronics' Samsung subsidiary, which will supply OLED panels to Apple's iPhones as soon as next year.
For the large-size OLED TV panel field, Samsung has been increasing research and development efforts. On March 2, 2016, at the “2016 Samsung China Forum” held in Shanghai, Samsung displayed a 55-inch transparent OLED TV on site, which is mainly used in commercial fields such as jewelry display cabinets, beverage freezer doors, and traffic command sand tables.
The OLED TV market is fully speeding up, and the pace of replacing LCD TVs is accelerating
Samsung's switch to the OLED TV camp is naturally good news for the OLED TV market.
Passively lit LCD TVs have congenital technical defects - the LCD screen itself can not emit light, you need to rely on the backlight tube behind the display screen to illuminate the screen, so the LCD TV image layering, dynamic image performance, can The viewing angle, response time and other aspects are not satisfactory. The active OLED TV picture is true in color, has an ultra-wide viewing angle, and is capable of rendering extreme black. The number of pixels is 64 times that of LCD TV, which is the best choice for HDR technology. Since last year, Skyworth, LG, Konka, Changhong and other color TV companies have promoted OLED TVs in high-end products.
Skyworth, LG and other manufacturers firmly believe that OLED TV will soon replace LCD TV, and the domestic middle class has a certain scale, which is an important signal reflecting market demand. Moreover, with the increase in the supply of upstream OLED panels and the improvement of the yield, the price of OLED TVs can be further reduced, so the timing of the promotion of OLED TVs has arrived.
Following the hot-selling OLED TV S9300 released last year, in April 2016, Skyworth United Warner and Tencent Penguin TV released the new OLED organic TV S9-I. Skyworth's newly developed OLED TV adopts 4-color HDR display technology. The 4-color HDR is based on the normal HDR, adding an HDR algorithm for the 4-color 4K screen, thus surpassing the normal HDR. By adding HDR algorithm on the 4 color 4K screen body, the OLED TV screen body can better improve the contrast and color reproduction when displaying the HDR film source, which is unmatched by the ordinary HDR technology of the LCD TV.
In the Internet era where smart TVs are popular, the operating modes of different color TV companies are very different. Compared with some of the color TV companies "buy content to send TV" marketing gimmicks: Skyworth wants to "buy TV to send content." Skyworth's pioneering work of “buying hardware to deliver content” has promoted the color TV industry to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of content services, and has also caused many color TV manufacturers such as Hisense to follow suit.
Although the overall situation of China's color TV market in 2016 is grim, the growth rate of the high-end market, which is represented by OLED TV, is still very fast.
Aowei Cloud expects that China's OLED TV market will reach 200,000 units in 2016, a four-fold increase over the same period last year. According to data from third-party research institutions, the global OLED market will reach US$15 billion in 2016. By 2022, this market will grow to US$29.1 billion. The data shows the strong development potential of the OLED industry.
Samsung's switch to the OLED camp will undoubtedly further boost the booming OLED TV market.