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AMOLED competition details +2

08:04 05-Jan-17


As expected, LG Display introduced its wallpaper televisions at CES.  What's more, the 65" model can be pre-ordered at $7999, whereas the thicker AMOLED offerings from Sony and Panasonic and the QLED TVs from Samsung did not specify pricing.  The wallpaper TV also won the Best of CES Innovations award, and other LG products won over 20 awards.

The wallpaper TV has a couple of features that I think will really differentiate it.  First, it gives a more immersive experience by appearing to meld into its background.  In the future, LGD demonstrated that this will also be enhanced by the Crystal Sound integrated audio that turns the entire screen into a sound system.  This is only possible due to the flexible AMOLED construction, and the Sony one has a similar feature, but it's unclear whether or not the sound technology on that model is coming from LGD.

As I've said all along, it seems pretty clear that LG Display will keep pushing its lead in TVs, and be second to Samsung in mobile displays, if only because of the gap in production capacity.  To that end, the latest report out of Korea indicates that Samsung will introduce the Galaxy S8 in March with about the same initial output (10M units) as the S7.  For UDC, Samsung's capacity has long been priced in, but the financial benefits it has derived from being a first-mover at scale in AMOLEDs, as well as chips, should be taken as an example of how much LG Display eventually stands to gain from its television monopoly.