Samsung to stop producing LCDs

Samsung Display will stop producing LCDs, the manufacturer has said. That will happen at the end of this year. Samsung still produces LCDs in two factories in China and two production lines in its home country of South Korea.

Samsung will still deliver orders until the end of the year and then production will stop, the manufacturer confirms to Reuters. One of the production lines in South Korea will focus on producing quantum dot screens. According to the Korea Times, there have been speculations for some time that Samsung wants to convert its South Korean and Chinese production lines for OLED panels with quantum dots. Last year, the company confirmed that it was working on so-called qd-oled panels and in 2021 the first 65-inch panel with that technology should roll off the assembly line.

This would be panels with blue OLEDs with red and green color filters, and quantum dots. LG owns the patent on the production of OLED panels with white OLEDs, which means that Samsung must use RGB OLEDs. The downside is that the quality deteriorates because blue, green and red don’t wear evenly, but Samsung seems to have overcome this problem.

Samsung does not further explain why it is stopping LCD production, but the manufacturer already stopped part of production last year due to a lack of demand for LCDs. More and more smartphones are switching to OLED screens, while LG is successful with its OLED panels for TVs, which it also supplies to more and more other manufacturers. Samsung also supplies many screens to other companies, including Apple. Competitor LG will stop producing LCDs in South Korea at the end of this year.