Samsung Display will stop making LCD panels starting in June this year. After a one-year extension granted due to the pandemic, the subsidiary specializing in imaging solutions had planned to completely cease production by the end of 2022, but a combination of factors has forced it to advance its plans.
The South Korean company had been producing LCD panels for a wide range of devices, both its own and those of other manufacturers, for more than 30 years. However, despite being one of the most important players in this industry, the business had ceased to be profitable in the face of proposals for Chinese and Taiwanese competitors.
Samsung will bet on QD-OLED panels
According to the Korea Times, A report by market research firm Display Supply Chain Consultants reveals that the price index for LCD panels has plummeted. The drop, which has been around 60% year-on-year, is due to manufacturers such as BOE and AU Optronics being able to offer increasingly lower prices to their customers.
On the other hand, Samsung’s LCD panel market share has shrunk considerably. In 2014 it was 22% and in the last year it was 2%. Given this scenario, the South Korean company has found no reason to go ahead with this production one more day, so its alternative will be focus efforts on panels with higher performancewhich are more profitable.
At the operational level, Samsung Display will relocate employees from LCD panel production lines to QD-OLED (Quantum Dot-OLED) production lines. As we have seen before, this type of panel has all the qualities to become a huge promise for the future, so the company will bet heavily on them. Among the proposals that we have today, the A95K MASTER Series from Sony and the S95BA OLED from Samsung itself stand out.
Over time we will see how new products arrive with QD-OLED panels, but this does not mean that LED LCD televisions disappear in the short term. The reason for this is that, as we mentioned above, the industry has other vendors that will supply LCD panels for the more affordable offerings from various manufacturers. Samsung Electronics, for example, would now have chosen to buy LCD panels from firms that are its competition, such as AUO and BOE.
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