[CES2015] Samsung’s love for OLED is at cross with that of LG

OLED is the only electronic appliance made in Korea which is commensurate with the modifiers such as the world’s first, best and most. It is even dominate not by one but by two major companies in both mobile device and TV categories, contending for supremacy in the flexible (plastic) device area as well.

But the periods that Samsung Display and LG Display have commercialized the OLED panel are completely different. Samsung Display is leading the small AMOLED panel produced on a glass substrate. LG Display took part in the initial stage but closed the business before long. Since then, Samsung Display is running alone, eagerly seeking a partner to compete in good faith for the development of OLED business.

The situation is reversed in the OLED TV. Taking a lesson from the failure in the AMOLED for mobile business and with adamant determination, LG Display succeeded in commercializing a large OLED panel available for the UHD TV using the oxide TFT, WRGB OLED, and hybrid encapsulation technologies that no one had thought of before. On the other hand, Samsung Display, the first of OLED, ceased mass-producing a large OLED panel and went into a long hibernation. Now LG Display is running a long marathon course on its own. The lonely sole lead in the TV market which is a flower of display industry is expected to continue for few years.

At CES2015, LG Electronics organized the booth focused on the curved UHD OLED TV, G Flex2, and G Watch employing OLED panels and to promote the excellence of OLED TV, it also prepared a section to compare the picture quality and viewing angle with LCD TV.

Samsung Electronics planned its booth concentrating on the SUHD TV which is the QD-BLU LCD TV, but there was a picture quality comparison section to judge against existing LCD, OLED, and PDP TV.

Samsung Electronics, which once promoted OLED as the best picture quality, now turned its back on OLED TV and began to exploit it in order to highlight the SUHD TV as a desperate measure. The OLED TV and PDP TV at the exhibition presented poor picture qualities compared to the SUHD TV without a doubt. However, the OLED TV which was used for comparison is said to be a product of Samsung and thus, it ironically demonstrated that Samsung Display’s manufacturing technique for a large OLED panel is inferior to that of LG Display, expecting to have a negative impact on the future OLED business of Samsung Display. Because it was obvious in the LG Electronics booth that anyone who saw the OLED TV in there was able to realize a superb picture quality of LG’s OLED panel for TV.

The view on LG’s OLED has clearly distinct at the LG Display press conference held on the eve of CES2015 opening. The platform was checkered with LG Display’s logo and the word OLED, presenting a strong will that LG Display will take a full responsibility of OLED.

The biggest accomplishment of CES2015 is that it was an opportunity to confirm the possibility of the sustained growth of Korean display industry as the industrial infrastructures are established to produce from a small panel for mobile device to a large area OLED panel even if LG Display and Samsung Display pursue different areas in the OLED panel industry.