CES Observation: Samsung QD-OLED jump tickets, mass production is blocked or not to LG platform?

On January 5, the annual International Consumer Electronics Exhibition (CES) opened as scheduled, and TV manufacturers went to Las Vegas with their new products. The impact of the external environment on offline exhibitions is still continuing, and this year's CES exhibitors are only half of those in previous years.

Samsung Electronics released its latest products before the CES show as in previous years, this time the new products are Micro LED, Neo QLED and Lifestyle TV, Micro LED TV new products cover 110 inches, 101 inches and 89 inches, Neo QLED TV is a Mini LED backlit LCD TV that combines quantum dot technology, and this year the brightness level has risen from 12-bit gradient to 14-bit gradient.

(Image source: Samsung Electronics official website)

Nail Technology noted that Samsung Electronics' QD-OLED (quantum dot organic light-emitting diode) did not appear at the exhibition, which is surprising, after all, this is a technical concept that Samsung once pushed. Instead, Sony launched a product equipped with a QD-OLED panel at CES2022, which was applied to its Bravia XR A95K, and the panel panel used was manufactured by Samsung Display.

More than a month ago, Samsung Display officially held a QD-OLED panel shipment ceremony, which began to lay out in 2019 and lasted two years.

Nail Technology believes that the "ticket jump" of Samsung QD-OLED may have three main reasons:

First, at the technical application level, it may be that "smooth" mass production has not really been effectively realized. It may be that there is a problem in one or some links in the final performance of the product or the stability of the supply, etc., and it is difficult to bring the new product to the market for the time being. After all, from the existing history of industrial development, any improvement in the yield of the display panel and the ramping of production capacity require sufficient time.

Second, at the level of brand communication, Samsung does not want to obviously stand for the OLED camp. After all, OLED stands for LG, and Samsung may be involved in the issue of "making a wedding dress" for competitors. Samsung and LG itself have been competitors for many years, and LG was once the most important promoter of OLED technology, and the earliest to achieve related mass production.

Nail Technology Observation believes that with more and more TV brands joining the OLED camp, LG has mastered a certain initiative in the competition, and Samsung, which had a verbal altercation with LG about the "false publicity incident" in the past two years, probably does not want to objectively pave the way for LG at the marketing level.

Third, at the level of strategic choice, Samsung is likely to still have some hesitation and wavering. In recent years, new display technology has emerged in an endless stream, in addition to OLED, lasers, MIni LEDs and so on can be described as a hundred schools of contention. Judging from Samsung's choice of Micro LED and Neo QLED related products to debut at CES, it wants to make more attempts. QD-OLED's ticket jump, on the one hand, may be to focus the display content on other new display technologies and applications, on the other hand, then, Samsung, which faces more choices, may also have new trade-offs in the future.

Of course, it still needs to be clear that regardless of whether Samsung QD-OLED has jumped tickets, how Samsung chooses in terms of large-size OLED, from the current point of view, OLED is still an active force in new display technology, not only more and more terminal brands are involved, in 2021, the performance of OLED TVs in the high-end market also helps some brands gain in revenue and image shaping.

As for Samsung, although it did not bring QD-OLED related products at CES2022, the possibility of abandoning the technology should not exist, even if considering the early investment and the possibility of the future market, Samsung's follow-up actions will most likely follow the "birdcage effect" under normal circumstances.

Among the three technical directions of OLED that can be known at present, printing OLED technology is still in the early stage of industrialization, and LG's main distilled white light OLED+ color film technology has the disadvantages of high cost and high power consumption, which may be an opportunity for Samsung's evaporation blue OLED+QD color film technology. If it is introduced to the market on a large scale in the future, it may not get better market feedback than LG's OLED. (Nail Technology original, reprint must indicate "Source: Nail Technology")