OLED TV: Introduction and Industry News - Page 70

Update: LG lowered the price of the 65EC9700 again to $7,999!

Amazon.com now offers LG's 65" 4K OLED TVs for $8,999 - down from $9,999. This actually matches the price of LG's 2015 65" 4K model (the 65EG9600). The 2015 model is still not shipping - Amazon says it will ship within 4-6 weeks.

LG's 65EC9700 is a UHD (4K, 3840x2160) 65" curved OLED TV, that supports LG's High Dynamic Range (HDR) algorithm, the True 4K Engine Pro (to upscale SD, HD and FHD content to 4K) and support of H.264 and HEVC H.265 formats (30p and 60p). The TV also supports automatic color temperature control for individual pixels via LG's Color Refiner.

A report from Korea says that LG Electronics' OLED TV sales are lower then expected. While the sales are increasing, the company expected them to grow faster, and as a result inventories are increasing. LG Display does not want to decrease its output (currently they aim to produce 600,000 panels in 2015) as this will cause panel prices to increase.

This report conflicts with an earlier report that said that LGD cannot meet the current demand for OLED TVs.

LG Display recently upgraded their OLED TV production capacity to 14,000 Gen-8 panels in a month, which will enable them to produce around 600,000 TVs in 2015. A company official told CNet that they currently cannot meet the demand for OLED TVs, and they "cannot build OLED TVs fast enough".

LG currently sees OLED as a way to gain brand perception - as "OLED equals LG equals great televisions". It seems the company is not in a rush to reduce prices as they want to have a premium price and perception for their OLED TV range, which also explains why they are currently focusing on 4K OLEDs and not FHD ones.

Amazon is now offering LG's 55EA9800 OLED TV (2013 model) for only $1,999. That's the lowest price ever for an OLED TV at Amazon.com. The EA9800 was replaced in 2014 by the 55EC9300 (which is now on sale on Amazon for $2,999). Both TVs use a curved 55" Full-HD OLED panel.

LG also offers the 55EG9600 curved 55" 4K OLED TV (2015 model), which is listed at Amazon for $5,499 but not shipping yet.

According to IHS, the OLED TV market will see slow growth unless producers manage to apply new technologies - mainly printing processes based on soluble materials and flexible substrates. If both technologies are to be adopted, IHS sees OLED TV shipments reaching almost 40 million units in 2023.

In the chart above, IHS Uses three cases. In Case 1, OLED TV makers use glass substrate and an evaporation process. In case 2 they adopt a printing process and soluble materials, and Case 3 assumes a flexible substrate is used as well.

Samsung and LG agreed to stop the ongoing legal disputes between LG Display and Samsung Display - thus ending a very long court battle that involved technology theft accusation, stolen TVs and even broken washing machines. The two companies ended all current disputes, and agreed to not take new legal actions - and try and settle all issues through dialog.

In past years we've heard of several lawsuits launched by both sides and even accusations of stolen prototype TVs. In 2013 two two Korean arch-rival agreed to resolve their OLED dispute and they even considered cross-licensing patents and dropped all OLED lawsuits against each other, but settlement negotiation failed. Maybe this time they will finally make peace.

According to Korean site ETNews, Samsung Display decided to re-enter the OLED TV market. The Korean display maker reportedly finds it difficult to make a profit from the competitive LCD business (some reports suggest that SDC aims to split the OLED and LCD business soon).

Interestingly, the reports suggest that Samsung aims to use a WRGB architecture - like LG uses in their own OLED TVs, and unlike the direct-emission used in Samsung's small display and first-generation OLED TVs. The WRGB (white OLED with color filters and four sub pixels) was originally developed at Kodak, and then bought by LG back in 2009.

Amazon.com is now shipping LG's new 55EG9600 curved 55" 4K OLED TV (2015 model). LG did not yet actually officially launch this TV in the US, but it's already shipping from Amazon. The price is $5,499 (and Amazon says that they currently have only 4 in stock).

LG EG9600 OLED TV

The EG9600 OLED TV series offer curved display, 4K resolution, LG's new anti-glare filter, LG's WebOS 2.0 Smart TV OS and quad-core CPUs.

One of the latest buzz words in the TV industry is HDR - High Dynamic Range. HDR video captures images with an expanded brightness range - darker shadows and brighter whites. An HDR TV will need to be able to display a wider range of brightness levels compared to a regular TV, and so the maximum brightness of any pixel needs to be higher - about 1,000 nits (compared to about 400 nits as the brightest pixel in a regular TV).

One of the challenges with OLED displays is making them bright enough, and usually LCDs offer a brighter image (although for mobile devices, the latest OLEDs are actually brighter than the best LCDs). LG seems to be confident that they can solve this issue, and during a press event in the UK company officials promised that LG will unveil an HDR OLED TV in Q3 2015 - around the time of the IFA 2015 exhibition in Berlin.

DisplaySearch estimates that 77,000 OLED TVs were sold worldwide in 2014, generating $280 million in revenue. Most of these TVs, of course were sold by LG Electronics. DisplaySearch says that in 2013 only about 4,500 OLED TVs were sold (so the market grew 17-fold in terms of units, and 5.5-fold in terms of revenue - as prices dropped sharply).

DisplaySearch breaks down sales by quarter - 4,600 units in Q1 2014, 13,500 in Q2, 16,900 in Q3 and 42,400 in Q4. DisplaySearch also details sales by region: 30.7% were sold in Western Europe, 18.4% in Asia and the Pacific regions, 18.4 in North America, 11.1% in China, 8.7% in Easter Europe , 8.2% in the Middle East and Africa and 5% in South America.