Samsung to Cease Traditional LCD Production, Move To Quantum Dot OLEDs
by Anton Shilov on March 31, 2020 7:30 PM EST
According to a report from Reuters, Samsung Display will cease production of traditional LCD displays by the end of the year. The move comes as the company is apparently turning its full efforts away from traditional liquid crystal displays and towards the company's portfolio of quantum dot technology. Building off of the Reuters report, ZDNet is reporting that Samsung is dropping LCD production entirely – including its quantum dot-enhanced "QLED" LCDs – and that their retooled efforts will focus on QD-enhanced OLED displays. A decision with big ramifications for the traditional LCD market, this means that by the end of the year, the LCD market will be losing one of its bigger (and best-known) manufacturers.
As recently as last year, Samsung Display had two LCD production facilities in South Korea and another two LCD plants in China. Back in October, 2019, the company halted production one of the South Korean factories, and now plans to suspend production of LCDs at the remaining three facilities due to the low profitability and oversupply of traditional LCDs.
Instead, the company will be turning its attention towards the quantum dot-enhanced OLED displays. A new technology for Samsung, this would be distinct from the company's current QLED displays, which use quantum dots to enhance LCD displays. Samsung previously announced their plans to invest a whopping $11 billion in QD-OLED production, and now those plans are moving one step closer to completion as the company gets ready to wind-down traditional LCD production.
To that end, one of the two South Korean LCD lines will be converted to produce displays and TVs featuring quantum dot-enhanced OLED panels. Samsung Display hopes that their sizable investment will pay off as the new technology promises unprecedented image quality and lower cost compared to regular OLED panels. Meanwhile, Samsung’s longer-term plans include building of two QD-OLED lines, though it's unclear for now whether this will include any of the company's Chinese facilities, or what may happen to those lines once they shut down at the end of the year.
Overall, Samsung is not the first nor the only LCD panel manufacturer to reduce their production. LG Display has converted as least one of its LCD factories to an OLED facility, whereas Panasonic last year decided to cease LCD manufacturing by 2021.
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Samus - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
It really is sad how we have all been lied too and drank the LCD koolaid. I'm always amazed how great CRT's look when I come across them, especially how natural the picture feels - even something simple like dragging as mouse cursor across the screen.Of course a ridiculously good refresh rate and no physical 'pixels' will have that natural effect that has been missing from LCD tech over the last 3 decades.
InTheMidstOfTheInBeforeCrowd - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
> no physical 'pixels'Yeah, lets conveniently ignore the physical shadow mask/aperture grille. Unless, you were speaking about CROs, Vectrex-like displays, or something along those lines... ;-P
FreckledTrout - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
LOL yeah lets see a 4k mask/aperture grille :)watzupken - Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - link
There is nothing disappointing with LCD to be honest. Each technology have their own pros and cons. OLED is definitely ahead when it comes to color reproduction (or may be in most cases over saturated), and brighter, as compared with LCD. Still burn in is a problem with OLED displays, and power consumption is generally higher despite being able to control the brightness per LED.imaheadcase - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
Not this again, burn in is not a problem with OLED if you are a regular home user. Its only a problem if you got a bad technology manager who buys them all for static displays.iphonebestgamephone - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
Whats a 'regular home user' according to you?ksec - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
LOL, everyone said this in 2017 / 2018, the reality is burn in is real, and problem starting to appear in two years time. While the problem isn't as severe as it was in the days of plasma, and we are constantly improving, saying burn in is not a real problem is very much misleading.verrin - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
Not this again. Do you own an OLED? Both my brother and I purchased an LG B7 back in 2017. Both our televisions have visible burn-in, although his is much worse due to the fact he uses it more frequently (probably two to three times as often). The use of over-saturated reds seem to cause the most rapid burn-in-- the Netflix logo is actually visible on my brother's TV, which is odd when you consider the fact it's not like it appears for very long when streaming content.I don't think this is acceptable for a TV in this price-range, honestly. Everyone has been parroting the line "OLEDs don't burn-in under regular use", which is BS. If a couple hours of playing games and watching shows, only a few times a week, isn't regular use than I don't know what is. It has barely been 3 years and I'm already looking to replace it. The last TV I bought was in 2008, and it still works great 12 years later.
As amazing as OLED picture quality is, it doesn't do it any good when your TV is covered in scorch marks.
close - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
@imaheadcase, I can assure you it very much is a problem. Unless for you "regular home user" means user that either keeps the screen off or displays white noise on it, OLEDs will suffer from some for of burn in. Visible even if not a blocker in any way.My TV has it and I pretty much never displayed a TV channel logo on it (only Netflix, Youtube, streaming from NAS, regular home user stuff), and my PC monitor solidly has it.
Duncan Macdonald - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link
That design may avoid the colour shift - however it is very inefficient compared to the samsung QD design. The LG design throws away two thirds of the produced photons in the colour filters which is far higher than the conversion loss in the QD layer in the Samsung design.