Company executive says OLED TV will be priced at over $9,458


Samsung Electronics said Thursday it will launch the 55-inch premium OLED in Korea in the latter half of this year, pricing it at over 10.8 million won (about $9,500).

In an event dubbed “2012 Samsung Premium TV Showcase,” the company said it will roll out the premium organic light-emitting diode TV set here and then release it in the U.S. and Europe.

“We will launch the OLED TV here within this year,” said Kim Hyun-suk, executive vice president of the visual display business at Samsung. “The new OLED TV sets will be more than doubled the price of the most premium LED TVs, which are about 5.4 million won.”

He also said the firm decided to hold the event to show that the product, based on RGB-OLED technology, will be manufactured despite rumors that Samsung is likely to choose White-OLED technology. White-OLED is the technology picked up by its rival LG.

“There are strange rumors that we may adopt a new technology for our OLED TVs, but we’re going with the RGB-OLED technology this year,” said Kim. “But Samsung is a firm that puts emphasis on a variety of technologies, meaning it is not the time to decide which technology we will adopt in the future.”

The new 55-inch OLED TV, equipped with crystal-clear picture quality in terms of color and different angles as well as minimal design to easily blend in at one’s house. It also introduced the “smart dual view” function which enables the viewers to watch two channels simultaneously by wearing 3-D glasses.

“It gives you the new experience of watching the channel you want through a single full high definition screen when viewing it together with another family member,” said Lee Kyung-shik, vice president of the firm’s visual display business.

“Another good aspect of it is the 3-D function for it does not trigger crosstalk because the OLED TV has a better response rate.”

Samsung’s OLED TV was first displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier in January.

Attention was paid toward the new TV set, shown also by LG at the trade show, but market research firm DisplaySearch provided a relatively dim outlook for the OLED TV market.

Claiming it is still a niche market, it said about 55,000 OLED TVs will ship this year and only 5 million of them will ship in 2015.

Samsung’s Kim also said it will take at least two to three years for the OLED TVs to become the mainstream items of the global TV industry.

When asked whether the new premium TV sets will be displayed during the London Olympics this year, he said the firm is looking into how effective it will be to feature the premium product during an international event.

“We’re currently considering as to when it will be the most effective timing to launch the product,” he said.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)