People familiar with the matter pointed out that Samsung Electronics, the world's largest TV manufacturer, plans to launch new TVs in North America and Europe early next year, and will use organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels supplied by rival LG Display's subsidiary.
The Korea Times reported that a senior fund manager of the Seoul branch of the U.S. investment bank said that according to their internal investigations into the Samsung TV supply chain, Samsung has recently criticized TVs using LGD OLED panels. The machine has completed quality testing and included LG Display in the list of supply chain manufacturers, and is considering launching TVs using LG OLED panels in Europe and the United States as soon as the first half of next year.
The manager estimated that Samsung will initially purchase 1.5 to 2 million panels from LGD. If the two parties formally sign the contract, the order value will reach billions of dollars.
People familiar with the matter said that Samsung’s cooperation with LG this time shows that Samsung has changed its strategy when the price of traditional LCD panels has risen too much. It wants to diversify the panel supply pipeline instead of focusing on a single company Samsung Display, and also intends to find an alternative to LCD. New options for the panel.
A director of Samsung's local partner company in South Korea said that from a business standpoint, Samsung's decision to use LG OLED panels was very smart. In view of the limited supply of OLED panels of Samsung Display, Samsung plans to adopt a "dual-track system" in the OLED TV business and classify TVs using LGD panels as cheap products.
