SPECIAL FEATURE - TV
SPECIAL FEATURE - TV TECHNOLOGIES Kevin Lee, Vice President of Technical Marketing, Samsung SAMSUNG STRIVES TO STAy NUMBER ONE THE ELECTRONICS GIANT OUTLINES NEW STRATEGIES FOR A TOUGH TV MARkETPLACE By Richard Barnes Samsung is still No1 in the TV market worldwide despite difficult market conditions for all players. So just how is Samsung weathering the storm and how do they intend to keep their leading position in the market? We put the question to Samsung’s Vice- President of Technical Marketing, Kevin Lee. We are changing our strategy to one that is based on strong products and technologies provide new experiences for consumers. That is our key success point for remaining No1 in the TV industry. We are concentrating on three areas. The first one is image quality, which is an essential part of the viewing experience; the second is design and the third is new features. So based on quality of image, design and new features, we intend to constantly. We have recently seen the 8000 series featuring a lot of connectivity. And last year we saw your internet TV for the first time. How much of a trend is this now? Most of our products are now digital devices and all of those devices can support digital content such as music, TV programmes and movies. Customers want to be able to use any kind of digital content and they want ease-of-use and simple connectivity. The other major trend is that people increasingly want to watch digital content that is on their computer via their TV set. One of the major evolutions of this year has been the introduction of the LED TV. How well have the sets been selling? It’s really going well, much better than we expected in the first half of the year. We’ll have to wait and see what happens in the second half but we are very positive about the future of LED TV. The advertising campaign has been very successful but it can be confusing for customers, some of whom thought that it was actually LED TV rather than LED backlight. Why did you call it LED TV? Actually, we like very simple communications with the customers. We have had a similar previous experience with rear-projection TV using different image technologies. If we are communicating too much about the back-lighting it gets too complicated. Do you think LED Backlight is going to kill plasma? It will take a long time and LED is not real competition for plasma yet. The plasma sets offer some very large screen sizes with the smallest plasma now around 42-inch. The smaller sizes of plasma have been fazed-out. How do you position the plasma and LCD sets at Samsung? With plasma we are focussing on 50-inch and above. The competitiveness between LCD and plasma is very clear. I think up to 40-inch LCD is much more competitive than plasma but certainly above 50- inch plasma is still very strong, which is why we are focussing on the larger sets. What are the main initiatives by Samsung in terms of sustainable manufacturing? Our vision and goal is to provide new experiences but we are also in the business of providing our own technical solutions with a green element. This includes our chipset solutions and our screen manufacturing divisions, which are constantly searching for greater operating efficiency alongside improved screen quality, but by using less electricity. How important is IFA for Samsung in terms of worldwide promotion? The timing is very important because that period of the year is a very hot season for TV sales and having the event just at the beginning of that period is ideal. Also in terms of product differentiation, it provides us with an important venue where we can interact with the public as well as the channels and distributors. Hall 20 / Stand 101 16 www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Saturday, 5 th & Sunday, 6 th September 2009
at w w w.ifa-international.org SPECIAL FEATURE - Tv TEChnoLogIES - LEd dISPLAySEARCh LEd FoRECAST Download Podcast 34 BILLIon LEdS FoR TFT LCd BACkLIghTS In 2012, UP 300% FRom 2008 To A 20% ShARE oF ThE LEd mARkET Download Video at w w w.ifa-international.org Table 1: LED Demand by Application (Millions of Units) A total of 70.8 billion LEDs were shipped in 2008 (see Table 1). There are two categories of LEDs used in display applications; active outdoor displays, which used 11 billion LEDs or 15% of the total in 2008, and LCD backlights, which consumed 8 billion or 11% of the total. Within LCD backlight applications, five key types are adopting LEDs: small/medium, notebook PC, desktop monitors, industrial applications, and most notably TV. Application 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Backlight for Notebook PC Backlight for Desktop Monitor 127 532 3503 6,230 8,193 8,873 0 5 145 585 1,032 1,789 Backlight for LCD TV 16 150 1,461 4,890 10,525 15,102 Backlight for Large Others (includes Industrial) Backlight for Small/ Medium Sub-total for Backlights Active Outdoor Display 4 189 475 701 879 1,114 6,662 7,253 6,046 6,768 7,059 7,244 6,809 8,129 11,630 19,174 27,688 34,122 8,755 10,947 11,584 12,941 16,809 24,481 Signal 1,512 2,125 2,582 2,925 3,302 4,991 Automotive 3,665 4,587 5,371 6,213 7,582 10,681 Illumination 3,606 4,755 6,148 7,919 10,679 14,882 Others 44,314 40,245 38,491 46,716 51,504 77,854 Total 68,662 70,788 75,806 95,887 117,564 167,011 Source: DisplaySearch Display LEDs: Lighting Up the Display World We expect around 3.7 million TVs will be sold this year worldwide. We also expect that by 2013 around 40% of TVs will have an LED backlight. What happens in the middle is going to depend a lot on the demand for LEDs, how quickly people can produce them at the right quality, or how quickly the quality standards get relaxed. But what is clear is that LED backlighting is the focus of the LED industry now and we think that about a ¼ of the LEDs will go into display applications. Paul Gray - Senior Analyst, Displaysearch Hall X.X / Stand XXX IFA International • Saturday, 5 th & Sunday, 6 th September 2009 www.ifa-international.org 17
