Rumors of more Samsung OLED TVs have been around all year, but it seems they’re dead and buried, for 2022, at least.
If you’ve been hoping for Samsung to launch a cheaper OLED TV option than the high-end Samsung S95B QD-OLED TV this year, then you should probably bury those hopes once and for all after comments from LG Display’s Chief Financial Officer, Kim Sung-hyun.
LG Display is the only company that makes the W-OLED screen tech that’s used in almost all of the best OLED TVs – the only alternative to W-OLED is QD-OLED, and that’s much more expensive (and is only used in two TVs to date). If Samsung is to make a cheaper OLED TV soon, it will need to use a W-OLED screen, and that means it needs to buy from LG.
However, during LG’s most recent earnings call this week, Kim Sung-hyun was quoted by Korea BizWire (opens in new tab) (via FlatpanelsHD) as saying: “Our new client (Samsung Electronics) had sought to use our OLED panels… While there had been some progress, the process has come to a halt at the moment.”
This is the latest story point in an on-going saga over whether Samsung would launch a whole range of cheaper OLED TVs this year, and it already wasn’t looking good back in May, because the two companies couldn’t agree on a price for the OLED panels. And then a general dip in TV buying (partly because so many people bought a new TV during the pandemic) reportedly made Samsung even less likely to launch its OLED TVs.
