Samsung Display Company Mulled As LCDs Give Way To OLED
As Samsung's own money-losing business in flat-screen TVs heads from LCDs to the OLED market quicker than a jackrabbit, Samsung is thinking about spinning off it's LCD unit to act of its own accord. This move will create a new entity by the name of Samsung Display Company and will, Samsung hopes, make it much more competitive in the smashingly popular world of HDTVs. This move has not yet been approved by shareholders, but given that the 2011 operating loss for the company's LCD business was nearly $900 million, we can't imagine why they wouldn't consider such a thing.
This spinoff would take place on the first of April, which assuming is not an April Fools Joke would both change the way Samsung goes about working with the industry, but would come before a full switch over of focus in development. This move also may come as a bit of a shock when you consider that last month a $940 million dollar deal with Sony was completed by Samsung which picked up their share of the LCD panel business. Despite this, Samsung announced the following:
"Currently, the display market is undergoing rapid changes with OLED panels expected to fast replace LCD panels to become the mainstream. Amid this structural change of the display industry, adopting measures for change and innovation, including business restructuring, are essential to improve our competitiveness for our display business." – Samsung
We'll certainly be seeing more Smart TV action out of Samsung this year, now the question is whether this will be done on mainly LCD or OLED displays. Also if Samsung spins off its display business, how does that affect the rest of their products which include displays as a matter of fact? Samsung is sure to see some large display changes across 2012!