Samsung Electronics is planning to manufacture more MicroLED TVs than usual next month, with 200 models expected to be produced in January, according to South Korean media reports.
The report by The Elec says 200 is an unusually high number of MicroLED TVs to be built in one month, though it can be explained by Samsung’s plans to use the displays to gauge the market reaction to the tech.
Samsung normally only builds around two dozen MicroLED TVs each month because that’s all it really sells. But with several tradeshows slated for the first quarter, Samsung wants to step up its efforts and get them in front of more people so they can see the new display technology for themselves.
Samsung will then fix its MicroLED TV manufacturing plans once it has assessed the market’s enthusiasm for the TVs. The company clearly isn’t sure how many it expects to be able to sell in 2022, given that the 110-inch model costs 170 million won (£107,000).
It has previously been reported that the company will launch additional sizes of MicroLED TVs this year, including 89-inch, 99-inch, 101-inch and 114-inch versions. To build the smaller displays, Samsung has had to adopt a new technology called low-temperature polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistors, which it uses to connect the individual pixels on the glass substrates.
The Elec said the LTPS TFTs are needed on the smaller MicroLED TVs as they allow those finer circuits to achieve 4K resolution, which is not possible using printed circuit boards.
Samsung has requested its subsidiary Samsung Display develop the new LTPS TFTs, and it will also procure them from Taiwanese firm AUO.
While MicroLED is Samsung’s most advanced display technology, the company doesn’t expect to sell more than a few thousand of them at the most. For that reason, its premium consumer TV lineup for 2022 will be made up of 8K Mini LED, 4K Mini LED and 4K OLED TVs. The latter models will include both regular OLED TVs that use panels supplied by LG Display, and also QD-OLED TVs, which are a new technology built by Samsung Display that combines OLED with quantum dots.
