Shockingly bad news for the future of affordable large format OLED displays - Page 5

where is my 30" computer OLED monitor that I would pay $1000+ for and would take advantage of what OLED can do? This is what they should be making not a 55" consumer display. Pioneer display department went belly up thinking this way. Not enough people are going to buy expensive large displays for living rooms anymore and that is far from the ideal environment for critical viewing. To the people who care, 55" is too small for home theater and too big for reference use in most cases. I would think the yield would be better at the 20-30" size as well and at least they would be refining as they go along. The jump in size seems similar to SED and we all know what the state of that is.

We aren't quite there on OLED pricing yet.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/766411-REG/Sony_PVM_2541_Professional_OLED_Picture_Monitor.html

25" for $5,490.00. Ok, ok, so we wait a while.

I like how they're careful to specify the viewing angles: ....though I'm guessing it's more like 89.9999999999º. :-D

Introductory price for Sharp 32" 4K LCD IGZO computer monitor coming in a month or two will be in the same range. I don't believe the OLED
provides much better color reproduction precision either. Hence I do not see anybody buying the 2K 25" OLED then. Standard 2K LCD monitors are so cheap no OLED can beat them. At high-end one can buy 27"@2560x1440 without much expense and this year marks transition to 4K, prices may start falling nicely and quickly. Thus, OLED for the computer monitors is definitely dead.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/1/3825868/lg-oled-tv-on-sale-february-preorders

Surprised?

Will the Chinese be able to produce OLED for cheaper prices than the Koreans?

No, since it's (a) in Korea only (b) $10,000 (c) subject to slip to beyond February (d) going to be such a small number of units even wealthy Koreans might well not know anyone who bought one.

No time soon.

Seems enough for more than 1400 stores in Korea...
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/01/lg-55-inch-oled-available/
Edited by ALMA - 1/2/13 at 7:07am

It's not a lot of stores anyway, but yeah, I've been puzzling over that statement as well since I first happened upon the press release an hour ago. It might simply mean that there are 1400 stores able to place an order for it. Using that standard, it could just as easily have been 14,000 stores.

By the way, the FCC ID sticker for it been circulating around since Dec 7. Not that it means anything, but it's a little heart warming to see.
Edited by tgm1024 - 1/2/13 at 7:54am

I can't help but think that the Korean companies are hell-bent to be first with large OLED regardless, just for the sake of national pride, and that we will have to wait for the Japanese Sony-Panasonic consortium to eventually get it right AND affordable. Granted that is probably five years away. Panasonic, in particular has almost never been first with any new technology, but after the initial flame-outs have had their day of glory they usually end up doing it right if and when they do it at all.

The press release does indicate that they are going to announce ship dates and pricing for other countries in the coming weeks. I would still expect sales volumes to be tiny.

IMO, this doesnt really tell us much about the future manufacturing plans. They could supply the number of units needed even with terrible yields. OTOH, the fact that they are willing to release the TV into the wild should mean that they are relatively satisfied with the performance. I still expect some flaws, as with any Gen 1 product, but hopefully no show stoppers. I'm looking forward to the first professional reviews.

As for a mass market roll-out, we still need to hear about some Gen 8 capex plans.

Since all of this is speculative, I suppose it's possible that this is all bravado and PR spin, but I don't see the pay off for LG in doing it. Assuming that Koreans line up to make orders, orders which are said to be fulfilled a month later, failure to deliver would not only wipe out any PR advantage, but would anger many people and create a very bad image problem for LG.

"LG is prepared to ramp up quickly to take the lead in the OLED segment that is expected to grow to 7.2 million units by 2016, according to Display Search."

This would be a pretty bold statement if the "shocking news" regarding OLED development were true in the sense that some are interpreting it. I think that there may very well be some real production issues for panels larger than 55", but whereas LG, Samsung, and others are diverting resources and attention to 4K panels...which are easier to make, and hopefully lucrative...I don't see these companies throwing their considerable investment in OLED into the rubbish bin.

Press releases and "news" in this industry, whether good or bad, are rarely a glimpse into what is really happening on the inside. To a certain extent they are mostly written by people on the "outside." It's also true that, as in the news and press releases in the stock trading world, news stories may be used to manipulate, to raise or lower expectations.

So, I remain cautiously optimistic that OLED, or some variant thereof, will make it into the marketplace.

I wonder what LG will charge for their own warranty on this thing. Longevity of these panels has *always* been in question.

rumors

LG russian launch in march ➔ $16.500
http://www.oled-info.com/new-lg-oled-tv-rumors-suggest-tv-will-launch-russia-march-16500

and chinese launch in april
http://www.oled-info.com/lg-aiming-release-their-55-oled-tv-april-2013

We in Germany have only 252 "Media Märkte" (Popular Store like BestBuy/ Magnolia in US) with a much higher population rate to km² than US with our 82 Million people. So I guess for a Country with 50 Million, 1400 stores is an huge number.
Edited by ALMA - 1/2/13 at 10:59am

Dead? I guess you just mean because of price. Certainly with regard to picture quality there are other things besides resolution and overall an OLED would just destroy an LCD. (I assume that they've somehow conquered burn-in is part of the premise of someone releasing a computer monitor. And actually I don't believe that's the case with the present Sony's, because they have prominent burn-in warnings in the manual.)

With a population of about 300 million in the US, BestBuy alone has about 1000 stores. That's just one retailer. So 1400 for a population of 50M doesn't seem like a huge a number to me.

US has only 32 people to 1 km², Germany 229 to 1 km², South Korea 489/km². You don't need many stores if there is an higher population rate with a much smaller urban sprawl than in USA. So 1400 stores for such an smaller country is huge.

They are not stocking the TV in 1400 stores. Try to read it again please.

You will be able to place an order in any of 1400 stores. So what?

You will also be able to place an order on millions of Korean computers I imagine once they enable online ordering. That doesn't tell us a damn thing about volumes.

I promise you there will not a demo unit in anything resembling 1400 stores anytime soon.

As slacker says, without some sense of their ability to produce more -- from the capital expense side -- this is all just noise.

It's good news, because some units > no units at all. But it's noise.

Sure, but the question had to do with how many units LG was able to make, no matter *where* they are sold. Production is the most discussed downside in the news on these things. The 1400 stores, even if they were shipped and sold to each and every one (which they're not claiming), isn't that big of a number to be impressed by. But, as I said, all it likely means *anyway* is that there are 1400 stores able to place an order. They could just as easily have listed every store, fish stand, and noodle cart there was in Korea, and it would be just as indicative of not much. Wish it meant more, but I don't think that number means a whole lot.

They did what I would have done in their place. Listed out the possible shipping points, so that the world knows that it isn't only available in special insider store next to headquarters, and say no more than that.
Edited by tgm1024 - 1/2/13 at 2:22pm

Correct. There is no implication they intend to sell anywhere near 1400 units at launch.

In fact, I very much doubt they will.

My guess is that at $10,000, the entire addressable market in Korea is well under 0.1% of households, which would be about 20,000 nationally -- as a very, very high estimate. If you figure that many people don't care, many people aren't that into TV, many people want a bigger TV, many people won't know it's for sale, many people won't early adopt, etc. etc., they would be lucky to sell 5000 across all of South Korea in the first year. Very lucky.

We should keep in mind that 48% of population lives in big city Seoul, probably 90% or so will be sold in Seoul.

What a particular place to be carrying a $10k TV.

Apparently cows are a discerning crowd...

I meant peculiar actually, but I think you sussed that out. Discerning bovines, whoda' thunk it.

Seoul or not, I think the point remains: They aren't selling many.

If that's a marketing photo, then it's a clever one. They're trying to fully plant in everyone's minds that this will be an omnipresent everyman item. With a touch of "we're changing the world".

Most Korean land outside Seoul is farmland that is why i posted a farm kind-ish photo.

It's actually a russian photo
One russian farmer decided to equip his cow barn with..LED TVs

Ah ok. They're samsung 7000 somethings.