Samsung's Dominance in the Display Industry

The proliferation of displays of all sizes is one of the salient features of the emerging 21st century information age.  Mobile displays are a particularly important feature of this development, as smartphones become increasingly cheaper, more powerful and popular all around the world.  The accompanying illustration (click to see a full-size version) shows a flexible active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AM-OLED) display that Samsung sees as a major growth engine.  As reported in The Korea Times, Samsung Mobile Display (SMD)  was launched in January 2009 with an aim to lead the market in next-generation flat-screens (OLED) as Samsung was seeking breakthroughs in that area.
SMD is dominating global demand for AM-OLED, which requires less power and provides clearer picture quality and a much faster response time than existing LCD displays. OLED screens are used in smartphones and other portable devices and SMD controls over 80 percent of the market, as shown in the graphic below. (click to see a full-size version)

China Looms Large in Display Market

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics currently lead the world in the manufacture and export of flat panel displays and television sets.   As outlined by the Korea Times today, China looms large for these two companies and for the other major manufacturers of flat panel displays.  After 2012, China is expected to become the world's largest market for displays, outpacing the United States and Europe.  LCD panels are used for everything from mobile phones, to computer displays to television sets.

Samsung is reportedly pursuing a "dual strategy" in the display business, by producing panels that require cutting edge technology in Korea, for export to the U.S. and Europe, while producing other panels in China.    LG Electronics, by contrast, is concentrating on gaining the "first mover" advantage in China by setting up partnerships in that country.  All of the world's biggest LCD panel manufacturers are in Asia, primarily in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.  The number of LCD TVs sold in China is expected to jump 76 percent to reach 23.6 million this year, according to Austin, Texas-based DisplaySearch. With Samsung and LG Display, Taiwan's Chi Mei, Japan's Sharp and China's BOE Technology are set to build advanced eighth-generation plants on the mainland.

The Significance of Korea's New LED Displays

As outlined in a Korea Times story yesterday, Samsung Electronics has launched its new series of LED displays in the Korean market.  They are now available in all major world markets.  Coincidentally, my wife and I purchased a 52 inch Samsung LCD television about a month ago, and have been enjoying it immensely.  We have no buyer's remorse since we purchased the HD TV-ready, top-of-the-line set at a competitive price and will be able to enjoy it for years.  A new LED model would have cost about $1,000 more (we paid about $2,200 for ours).  However, the new LED models are thinner....much thinner, lighter and are also 40 percent more energy efficient, while rendering colors slightly better than our new television set.  This morning, just before coming in to work, I watched live coverage of the Arnold Palmer Invitational from Florida as Tiger Woods sunk a long putt on the final hole to win.  Watching it on the 52" LCD television was so much more fun than on our old, smaller CRT television.

As readers of this blog will know, I'm currently doing my own research on the information and communication revolution in Korea.  In the broad context of this nation's efforts to build an information society, what is the significance of LED televisions and the display industry more generally?   I suggest the following for starters.

• The display industry is a core or "anchor" technology of the information age.  This will continue into the future as sight and visual images are such a major component of human communication.  The closer the actual image on a display is to real human vision, the more realistic the viewing experience will be.


• Korea's growing strength in the semiconductor industry complements its work with displays.  In fact, the manufacturing process for displays is very similar to that for semiconductors.


• By introducing the LED line of televisions now, Korea's companies will have a big edge over their competitors when the global market for these devices reaches economies of scale.  There are as yet no major Japanese, North American or European competitors in the display market.


• From the standpoint of ordinary consumers around the globe, there is no doubt that once the price reaches an acceptably low level, many will trade in their "old" LCD television sets for a newer, lighter, greener and more "fun to view" set.

In short, South Korea's leadership in the display industry is integral to its overall development as a global ICT leader.

New York Times: "Big Step Forward for Flexible Electronics"

The discovery made news rather quickly and now the New York Times has picked up the story.  A research team from Sungyunkwan University and the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology has developed a technique for making stretchable, thin electrodes out of graphene.  As the New York Times article put it "Graphene is a single-layer sheet of carbon atoms (the building block, in fact, of the graphite used in pencils) and has properties that make electronics engineers swoon. But making graphene sheets of a practical size has proved problematic." In addition to being nearly transparent and having excellent electrical characteristics, the films this research team has developed are unaffected by bending or stretching. And the researchers say the process is scalable, so relatively large films can be made.  More on this development in later posts.