Though Samsung Display ceased manufacturing LCD panels in June of last year, the vast majority of Samsung TVs still rely on them.
Korean newspaper The Elec has reported that 26% of Samsung TVs in 2023 ship with a VA LCD panel from China’s TCL CSoT. In second place is HKC at 21%, and BOE sits at fourth with 11%, meaning nearly 60% of TVs sold by Samsung in 2023 come with Chinese-supplied LCD panels. According to flatpanelshd, Samsung Electronics plans to procure 38 million LCD TV panels this year.
The following was originally published May 31, 2022:
As reported by The Korea Times sources claim Samsung Display will stop producing LCD panels as soon as next month.
The business unit called Samsung Display is about two decades old and was formed to produce the panels used in products made by its parent company, Samsung Electronics. It came to be a leading supplier of LCD panels to the industry at large.
But fierce competition from other suppliers like China’s BOE heavily impacted Samsung Display’s business, as even Samsung Electronics began to do business with Chinese and Taiwanese LCD companies. Once the world’s leading LCD panel manufacturer, Samsung Display’s market share has dropped to just 2 percent.
Samsung was already reportedly planning to close the unit, but it was temporarily rescued by a global surge in demand for consumer electronics. But as that demand fell off, the future was looking bleak. According to Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), a U.S. market research firm, the average price index of LCD panels, measured against 100 in January 2014, will fall to 36.6 in September of this year. The figure has dropped farther from the record low of 41.5 in April of this year, and 58 percent lower than the record high of 87 in June 2021.
Samsung Display will now focus heavily on OLED and quantum dot. Most of the employees working in the LCD business will move to quantum dot, the publication claims.
According to Ars Technica, The Korea Times has accurately reported similar stories like this before, but it has also occasionally missed the mark, so keep an eye out for an official statement from Samsung.
