It's official: the world of OLED will never be the same again. LG and Samsung under the Chinese steamroller

OLED TV: a brief history of the most prestigious technology on televisions

OLED is not as new as you think. The technology was invented by Kodak in 1987 and the first OLED televisions came from Japanese brands in 2004. But hey, at the time, we were extremely far from the products that can be found on the market today. That all changed in 2012 when LG released the first 55-inch OLED TV, the largest OLED screen ever built (for the time obviously).

LG has a subsidiary, LG Display, specializing in screen construction. It is this company that made the bet on OLED the earliest, betting quite heavily on it. So, for many years, only LG engineers were capable of mass producing large OLED panels. In 2013, following the abandonment of Sony and Panasonic, LG had already become the undisputed leader in the OLED TV market. This unchallenged domination lasts for years. In 2017, as the technology began to catch on with the general public, all manufacturers who wanted to offer their customers OLED televisions had to purchase panels from LG Display (Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Toshiba, etc.).

For its part, Samsung abandoned the idea of ​​building its own OLED televisions in 2015. LG's Korean rival apparently did not have confidence in the future of this technology, which was still problematic on certain points at the time. Samsung has therefore gone all out on its in-house technology, with the evocative name of QLED. And don't be fooled by the proximity between the two spellings: QLED is a technology that has absolutely nothing to do with OLED. To find out more about this, I invite you to read this article which explains the different display technologies found on the 4K TV market. .

In 2022, when LG reigned supreme and OLED had definitively established itself as an essential technology for high-end televisions, Samsung returned to the charge via its own screen construction subsidiary, Samsung Display. You should know that Samsung has been THE world leader in the television market for many years. For them, it is therefore inconceivable to leave LG alone in an important sector of the 4K TV market. This is how Samsung Display engineers proposed their own version of OLED, QD-OLED, quickly adopted, among others, by Sony.

We'll spare you the technical details that differentiate LG's OLED (called WOLED) and QD-OLED. Just understand that Samsung arrived in 2022 with mature and extremely capable technology. That's it, 2 factories are capable of producing large, extremely efficient OLED panels at a good price.

TCL is in the race! The end of the reign of LG and Samsung?

About a year ago to the day we explained to you, with supporting figures, how bad the OLED sector is doing. Even if smartphones and OLED monitors are becoming more and more common, when it comes to televisions, it's a bit of a crisis. Over the years, OLED technology has become more and more efficient, gradually eliminating its problems of brightness or marking. The best OLED TVs of 2024 are almost perfect. They only lack one thing: an affordable price.

Building a large format OLED panel requires many more resources than an LCD panel. Worse still: OLED is fragile technology. In factories, a very large part of the production ends up being thrown away before even being installed on a television. All these technical hassles have a major impact on the final price of the products. Today, the prices of OLED televisions are stagnating or even increasing, while those of LCD televisions, in particular Mini-LED, continue to fall.

You will have a hard time finding a good new OLED TV for less than €1000 (for 55 or 65 inches), even during periods of strong promotions, and most people simply do not have that amount to invest in the black square that will sit in the middle of their living room. And then, the general public is quite poorly informed. For just about everyone, the fundamental difference between an OLED TV and its competitors is above all the price. Especially since over the years, a trend is confirmed: the screens are all getting bigger and bigger. This trend is true for smartphones, PC monitors and televisions. And who says biggerThis size also means higher prices. Knowing that a medium-sized OLED TV is already expensive, you can imagine that a 77-inch product at 3,000 euros can only appeal to a niche market. Some analysts therefore believe that the golden age of OLED could already have passed. The predicted boom may never happen. Unless…

New panel manufacturing processes are being implemented. Have you already heard of Japan OLED, also called JOLED? JOLED was founded in 2015 and is a collaboration between several companies, including Sony, Panasonic, and Japan Display Inc. JOLED displays are distinguished by the use of inkjet printing for the manufacture of their OLED panels, a method considered more cost effective and more environmentally friendly compared to traditional material vaporization processes. This approach allows OLED materials to be printed directly on the substrate, which can lead to more efficient mass production and reduced waste.

In short, OLED by inkjet printing is cheaper, more flexible, brighter, more ecological… just better.

Unfortunately, the Japanese manufacturers have never managed to do anything with their patents. The latter were therefore bought by a titan with almost infinite means: TCL. TCL owns CSOT, the world's largest slab manufacturing factory complex. Once the JOLED patents were in hand, the Chinese manufacturer quickly began producing inkjet-printing OLED prototypes and exhibiting them at specialized trade shows. We were able to see it with our own eyes at the IFA in Berlin, for example.

All that to get to the news of the day. At the end of 2024, TCL CSOT declares itself ready to mass produce inkjet printing OLED panels. To prove it, the manufacturer even revealed to the world a freshly printed 21-inch 4K screen. Without a doubt, many major players in the industry will buy panels from TCL. For example, we expect a printed Apple OLED screen.

So is this the end for LG and Samsung? Far from it. The two giants of Seoul still have something under their belt. They will have to respond to Chinese competition, of course, but don't bury them too soon.