Aju Business Daily

LAS VEGAS -- With the growing popularity of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology in the premium TV market, LG Display is confident of maintaining a competitive edge over Quantum Dot OLED (QD OLED) panels to be produced by domestic rival Samsung Display.

LG has focused on OLED technology, while Samsung has promoted LCD TVs enhanced with quantum dot LCD panels, a short-term strategy before moving to self-emitting QLED displays which will replace the passive color filters in front of liquid crystal pixels with a quantum dot color filter.

In an answer to LG's White OLED panel, Samsung plans to build capacity for QD OLED panels. LG has made a breakthrough in White OLED, a next-generation light source, which is ultrathin, large-area light sources made from organic semiconductor materials. It is the combination of fluorescent blue dyes with phosphorescent green and red emitter systems in one OLED to get white light.

At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, LG Display CEO Han Sang-beom said Samsung's entry into the OLED market would rather spur technological advances in terms of equipment, materials and a supply chain. "If there are more competitors in the OLED market, it is not a threat, but a good helper," he said, adding the base of QD-OLED sought by Samsung is based on OLED after all.

After six years of investment, LG made a surplus in OLED for the first time last year, accounting for 20 percent of total sales, Han said, promising to increase the production of OLED panels from 2.8 million units in 2018 to more than 3.8 million this year and over ten million in 2021.

Han promised to expand the production of large OLED displays and develop new markets with differentiated products such as slim, rollable, transparent and crystal sound OLED (CSO) panels. He was also confident of beating rivals in the 8K TV market.

At an industrial exhibition in Germany in August last year, Samsung showcased its first 8K self-emitting QLED set using artificial intelligence. True QLED displays will have lower production cost and longer service life than OLED models but production has been delayed due to technological problems.