Samsung Talking Big OLED TVs April 22, 2008

Samsung is hoping to ramp up production of larger OLED-based TVs and bring them to the masses as early as next year.

Sony might be stealing all the thunder [and cash] with its incredibly skinny XEL-1, and its newer, almost invisible OLED panels, but Samsung did show off a very impressive 31in OLED telly [above] at CES 2008. Right now active matrix OLEDS (AMOLEDS) are restricted for use in smaller panels but by 2009/2010, Samsung believes it will have reached the economies of scale possible to bring them to laptops, TVs and monitors.

Right now they are beautiful but heart-stoppingly expensive.

Woo-Jong Lee, vice president, mobile display marketing team, at Samsung SDI has claimed that once a capacity of 3 million units can be achieved, economies of scale will kick in and production costs will fall. Samsung SDI will hit 3 million units in 2009, up from today’s 1.5 million, and he expects to hit 6 million units by 2010.

That said, OLED TVs will not be cheap for years to come and you can expect the kind of price tags that will have you sucking air between your teeth and pulling pained expressions.-Martin Lynch

[Digitimes]

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