We all know that LG Display managed to beat Samsung and be the first company to actually produce and ship OLED TV panels. Today the Korea Times claims that Samsung decided to adopt LG's own WRGB architecture and the company will start producing such OLED TV panels towards the end of 2013.
Samsung and LG have taken different paths towards large sized OLED panels. Samsung is using an LTPS backplane and a direct-emission (or side by side) architecture which means that there are three sub pixels for each pixel (red, green and blue). Samsung's design does not use any color filters. LG's OLED panels use an Oxide-TFT backplane and white sub pixels with color filters (this is called WRGB because there are four subpixels: red, green, blue and one white, non filtered. Is is also referred to sometimes as WOLED-CF).
On paper Samsung's design is superior as it's more efficient (no filters) and enables smaller pixels. However it has proved to be very difficult to achieve good yields with this technology. The main issue with the large OLED panels is the patterning of the OLED sub pixels. Using white OLEDs means that no patterning is actually needed. Even though Samsung has more experience with OLED production, LG Display managed to bring their technology faster to the market.
Now if this report is true, it'll be difficult for Samsung to communicate it as in past years their stated that their technology is superior (even calling them "Real OLED TVs"). The relationship between Samsung and LG is getting better, and it's possible we'll see some sort of cross-license agreement or even a collaboration between the two Korean companies - which may enable Samsung to adopt the WRGB technology.
