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Samsung Still Not Ready To Invest In OLED TV Production.

5K views 54 replies 27 participants last post by  rogo 
#1 ·
Park Dong-gun, CEO of Samsung Display, said that the time is not yet ripe for investing in OLED TV panels within the year. Unlike its rival, LG Display, which is accelerating its forays into the Chinese OLED market with large investments, Samsung Display is still careful.

Mr. Park Dong-gun met reporters on August 27 at ‘International Meeting on Information Display 2014’ in Daegu EXCO. “We already have the related production and infrastructure technology so that we can begin production as quickly as possible when our customer wants it,” he said. “Our investment in OLED TV panels relies on the customer’s will.”

http://english.etnews.com/device/2965454_1304.html
 
#2 ·
Latest rumors are that Samsung is going to release Quantum Dots LCDs at IFA this coming week. While at the same time still looking to get back into OLED production for 2015. Reportedly, the have found a way to reduce the steps needed to make OLED and can increase their yields. I don't see Samsung sitting idly by while LG tries to take off with OLED.

http://www.oled-info.com/samsung-st...tvs-may-introduce-quantum-dots-lcds-next-week
 
#8 ·
It sounds to me like resuming production of OLED TVs is the last thing Samsung wants to do.

""We can't fix the timing of the mass-production of QD screens. But because QD screens can bring better viewing image than conventional LCD screens, QD TVs could become a good competitor with OLED TVs," said the official."

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2014/08/133_163798.html

Their first failed production efforts probably has left their senior management gun shy about reentering the OLED TV market, and the longer they delay, the more LG Prices will have dropped and make it even harder for Samsung to recoup their startup costs, and also the Chinese will have been making strides in their development of low priced OLED TVs.
 
#11 ·
I was an early adopter of a Samsung LED FALD LCD. I don't know what is going on with OLED but I am wondering about the longevity of OLED?
LG stated that their OLED will last as long as a Plasma,but that remains to be seen and we won't know until early adopters report back in a few years.
Thank you early adopter!
 
#22 ·
Samsung is out. They will try to sell edgelit LCD/LED like always, i hope they survive when chinese manufactures enter in the market, a LED TV, a slim tv, a smart tv, a curved tv, a qd tv, all marketing crap...but the picture will always be the same than cheaper and bigger chinese tv. Thank your LG, the only one that make a huge risk to survive with a better product
 
#24 ·
Crash and burn Samsung :) you can keep your silly curves, LED televisions, price fixing, panel swapping, "dynamic" contrast ratios, ten cent capacitors, useless service/operation manuals, IP theft and benchmark manipulations and play it fair like everyone else
 
#25 ·
Could QD be used as a color filter with White OLED? I could totally see Samsung trying to go that route if their current RGB method and ink jet printing never take off.
 
#26 ·
QD Film merely refines the color composition of the white light but does not filter it - it creates a white light composed of sharper more distinct Red Green and Blue peaks so that the RGB filters can be more effective (and block most/all of the unwanted wavelengths). QD Film might be a good way to take low-cost white (or more likely blue) LEDs and create white light with good RGB chromatic purity from them for wide color gamut and deep color saturation, but that is the chromatic purity that white OLED already offers, so QD film would add nothing but cost to a WOLED TV...
 
#30 · (Edited)
Its obviously than their curved Tvs are selling better because almost every high end panel they make is curved and not flat, seems like people like this kind of involution and defend samsung whatever decision they make, sony is not cheaper at all unless you like ips panels. Samsung is a brand that can make everything to make OLED fail just because they cant mass production, even they can make bad advertisement of OLED weak points.

Example: IPhone vs galaxy promos

If we or those who call himself videophiles not support lg now and wait for sammy masterbrain ceo to decide to invest in OLED...
good luck with that edgelit LED tv with maybe 16 zones of local dimming.
 
#33 ·
I'm surprised they (Samsung) haven't released an edge lit TV using OLED backlights instead of LEDs. That would really confuse consumers and muddy the reputation true OLED panels could garner. Perhaps there is technical reason...
 
#36 ·
Samsung isn't up to anything. They are biding their time until someone comes to them with an OLED printer they can use, I'd imagine.

Small-mask scanning is not going to make volume-production OLED TVs now, next year or ever, unless someone invents some new material that doesn't currently exist.
 
#37 ·
Samsung is just sitting around waiting for someone to fix their problems? I'm pretty sure they would have a different take on that.

Samsung definitely made a bad decision on technology but industry experts suggest it was in choosing LTPS over oxide rather than SMS over WOLED. I'm sure this has been posted before
http://www.oled-a.org/images/pdfs/OLED-A 2014 White Paper.pdf

"Samsung has opted to delay mass production, even as the yields have increased to ~80%. The rationale provided by Samsung is that the production costs remain too high. Comparing LG’s costs with SDC’s costs, the major culprit is likely to be the backplane, where LTPS is close to twice as expensive as IGZO in terms of Capex. It is likely that Samsung’s Frontplane is less expensive than LG’s Frontplane because of the added organic layers in the tandem structure and the use of a color filter."

Samsung seems to have recognized they weren't going to be able to match LG's pricing with their LTPS approach and they are currently working on developing oxide for OLED.

I get that you were "wow"ed by your visit to Kateeva. Seems you had the same feeling after CES a few years back. Are you going to be just as disillusioned if Kateeva printed OLEDs don't come out soon?

Printing certainly has potential but the capex is similar to vapor deposition, thoughput is probably similar as there is an extensive drying period that needs to occur after printing, and the materials they are more efficient at using only account for about 1-2% of the cost of the display.
 
#38 ·
This has nothing to do with being wowed by Kateeva (although I do like their technology).

The problem for Samsung is that the throughput is awful. It's all well and good to claim 80% frontplane yield (with a completely pointless LTPS backplane and no experience in IGZO, which took LG 2 years to get working..... but that's another matter), but if you can't mass produce, the yield is irrelevant.

Every method has drying time, incidentally, depending on how you look at it. I doubt it's very long for nano-scale printed OLED material on inkjets, but I'll try to ask. I'm also not of the mind that LG's method is especially high throughput given the multiple vapor deposition steps, but it can't possibly be as dreadful as scanning the mask over large substrates in small chunks.

And, honestly, I actually doubt strongly that Samsung is even planning to try to produce millions of OLEDs with this method. It's so unbelievably Rube Goldberg. The very reason small masks are acceptable on small screens is that you can just line them up and push the material through and cut later. Moving them at a zero-pixel-error registration and having to do it again and again is an absurdly precise problem. You can believe they are not pursuing OLED because they can't make backplanes they are successfully making for smaller size displays; I'll believe they are not doing it because they can't use SMS for mass production. (The paper you cite has no opinion, actually.)

I believe that Samsung is waiting. They are a display maker, not a display equipment maker. There are at least 3 companies pursuing printing solutions. If any of them produce a workable solution, Samsung will likely be the first customer to build TVs with it.
 
#40 ·
In fairness to Samsung, I'm quite sure they are talking to Dai Nippon, Epson, Kateeva, anyone else pursuing printing, on a weekly basis about status and progress. I'm sure they've seen all the test machines and are developing the technology that works alongside the printing machines.

I have no doubt they are pursuing an IGZO/oxide backplane program.
 
#41 ·
I have a very hard time believing that Samsung isn't continuing to pursue ways of making the small-mask thing actually increase in yields.

I know you referred to a registration error of zero, and I assume you were being glib, because everything has an acceptable tolerance, even if it's down to the atom as is the case with graphene computing).

Rogo, honest question: Do you really believe that they believe that it's an insurmountable problem to not even continue working on?
 
#42 ·
I have a very hard time believing that Samsung isn't continuing to pursue ways of making the small-mask thing actually increase in yields.

I know you referred to a registration error of zero, and I assume you were being glib, because everything has an acceptable tolerance, even if it's down to the atom as is the case with graphene computing).

Rogo, honest question: Do you really believe that they believe that it's an insurmountable problem to not even continue working on?

In the context of believing there are less expensive OLED manufacturing processes on the horizon (printed OLEDs), believe that they have taken much of the winds out of LGs WOLED sails with their 'curved LED/LCD' initiative, and in the context of the investment needed the chase LG into industrializing a technology that has fundamental disadvantages in terms of cost and complexity, I really believe that the answer to your question is yes.

LG fails, them Samsung was smarter and saved a lot of investment dollars. If LG succeeds, Samsung will be able to ride on their coattails with something even less expensive before LGs lead becomes insurmountable.

Can't say I am at all happy with Samsung's influence on the TV market (last time around with 'thin' meaning edge-lit and this time around with 'the curve'), but have to give them credit for being smart business people...

Looked at in the context of limiting their exposure on LGs OLED taking off just when Samsung decided to retrench on OLED to develop something better and cheaper, 'the curve' initiative of 2014 is pure genius:"They've got curved TV, we've got a curved TV, in fact we, Samsung, are the leader in curving TVs for your increased viewing comfort."
 
#43 ·
In their tablet ads over here (UK) Samsung claim AMOLED is superior to LCD. They show the two display types next to each other, show the vibrant colours of one next to the washed out pastel shades of the other and boast about the AMOLED tablet's 100,000:1 contrast ratio.

Their message with respect to TVs seems a little disconnected from that.
 
#53 ·
Well they have actually been mass-producing phone and tablet sized AMOLED panels for years now. They own the small OLEDs market too, nobody else even makes OLEDs for those applications.

Their issues with TV-size OLED panels are a whole different ball of wax.

This is Samsung essentially saying we haven't solved the puzzle yet, please be patient until we do. Meanwhile, LG is trailblazing and laughing their way to the bank as the generation 2 panel is set to roll out.
LG selling maybe 3,000 OLED TVs a year worldwide to the most bleedingest of bleeding edge adopters probably isn't making Samsung quake in their boots. If anything, Samsung have observed that annual sales haven't even cracked 5 figures and feel secure that they can continue to develop their own technology and not fall behind in the market.

Hell, the Japanese haven't even been able to commit to consumer OLED production much less begin developing it.
 
#49 ·
Kateeva raises $38 million from Samsung and others, on the way to flexible OLED and OLED TV ink jet printing

http://www.oled-info.com/kateeva-ra...ay-flexible-oled-and-oled-tv-ink-jet-printing

"So basically, Kateeva's plan is to produce encapsulation systems for flexible OLEDs in the near term (forecasting sales of over $100 million per year). In 2020, they will start offering OLED TV printing systems "

If this report is straight from the horse's mouth, and since the website says that Kateeva is one of their sponsors, it just might be factual, then if Samsung is waiting on Kateeva to deliver on OLED TV Printing Systems, they will have to wait for them until 2020.

Of course there are other companies also working on developing their own OLED printing systems, so Samsung may just be investing in Kateeva, as one of their potential future supplier options.
 
#50 ·
Kateeva raises $38 million from Samsung and others, on the way to flexible OLED and OLED TV ink jet printing

http://www.oled-info.com/kateeva-ra...ay-flexible-oled-and-oled-tv-ink-jet-printing

"So basically, Kateeva's plan is to produce encapsulation systems for flexible OLEDs in the near term (forecasting sales of over $100 million per year). In 2020, they will start offering OLED TV printing systems "

If this report is straight from the horse's mouth, and since the website says that Kateeva is one of their sponsors, it just might be factual, then if Samsung is waiting on Kateeva to deliver on OLED TV Printing Systems, they will have to wait for them until 2020.

Of course there are other companies also working on developing their own OLED printing systems, so Samsung may just be investing in Kateeva, as one of their potential future supplier options.

$38 million seems like peanuts. Samsung is probably making a hedged bet on their success. They don't expect it to work, but if they pull it off, the ROI on Samsung's part will be huge.
 
#51 · (Edited)
Hmm, I know someone else who wrote about that deal.... I forget who...

I think maybe you're missing the point on the $38M. It's not about the dollar value. Kateeva has been working on the YIELDjet for a while now. They have made more progress in less time than some other, much bigger players. If there is a viable inkjet printer that's going to be used for (a) any displays next year (b) TV in 2016, it will be Kateeva. Printables for TV still have issues around materials longevity -- ironically not a problem for smartphones -- but the hope is that steady progress is being made there too.

Kateeva and Samsung have announced nothing except this investment. Kateeva set up shop in South Korea earlier this year. Samsung shut down OLED TV making using SMS earlier this year or late last year. Anything is possible, but here, outside an official Forbes post, I'll tell you my personal belief is that right now Samsung's TV hopes are with Kateeva's equipment and inkjet printable OLED -- and only there.

If it works out, great, you'll see Samsung meaningfully back in the market in 2017. If not, you'll see them working around LG's patents or seeking a different inkjet solution. I'm sure the "hedging" is that those latter two are both ongoing efforts.
 
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