[CES 2019] Samsung CEO doubts marketability of rollable TV

LAS VEGAS -- Samsung Electronics will not immediately join the new market for rollable TVs that surprised the world this week at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019, according to the company’s chief of consumer electronics division, raising doubt as to the “economic efficiency.”

During a press conference held Tuesday, Kim Hyun-suk pointed out, “The problem of rollable TVs is economics.”

The comment was made after Samsung’s archrival LG Electronics impressed the world with the industry’s first rollable organic light-emitting diode TV on Monday.

“I doubt the economic competitiveness of rollable TVs in a situation that does not guarantee profitability,” Kim said. 

“Samsung has not launched a rollable TV yet because it is not competitive enough in the market,” the CEO continued. “Samsung will jump into the market only if there are consumer needs for rollable TVs.”

The world’s top TV maker by market share for the past 13 straight years is pushing its liquid-crystal display-based quantum-dot light-emitting diode TV technology as mainstream against LG’s OLED TV technology.

Due to the cost effectiveness of LCD panels, Samsung’s TV business achieved a significant improvement in profitability last year, while LG has struggled with the low margins of OLED TV sales that led to a whopping 80 percent plunge in fourth-quarter operating profit.

“Samsung will maintain QLED and Micro LED technologies as two tracks of its TV business for the time being, with no plan to join the global trend toward OLED,” Kim said.

By Song Su-hyun

Korea Herald Correspondent (song@heraldcorp.com)