LG forecast strong OLED prospects
March 6, 2018
By Chris Forrester
There’s a strange dichotomy between South Korea’s two technology giants. On the one hand LG Electronics said March 5th that its OLED TV displays will be responsible for around 20 percent of its sales this year (and a greater proportion of profits). Last year OLED sales were responsible for 15 percent of overall sales.
“LG Electronics has been posting two-fold annual growth in the premium TV market centering on OLED TVs,” said Kwon Bong-suk, who heads up LG’s home entertainment business, claiming the company aims to pull off strong growth throughout 2018.
LG’s comments came as the company unveiled its 2018 line-up of OLED and unveiled 10 new OLED models, and a forecast that sales of OLEDs this year will top 2.5 million units (1.6m last year) and up to 77” in size.
The dichotomy comes about because LG’s arch-rival Samsung is over-supplied with OLED panels because of the poor sales of Apple’s iPhoneX. Consequently, Samsung is expected to cut production of OLED panels by half this year.
OLEDs are extremely popular for smart phone and TV use because they do not need backlighting, meaning less power consumption for mobile phones as well as allowing thinner devices (for phones and TVs).
As for TVs, Samsung is backing its QLED TVs which are backlit.