Remember when micro-LED was the future of television, and would blow away the best OLED TVs, with their superior brightness and equally good black tones? Sadly, it seems that future is still a few years away. A new report says that both LG and Samsung are scaling back their investment in the technology, because it's proving much harder to manufacture than anticipated.
The news is important because the two companies are arguably the biggest proponents of micro-LED technology. LG’s first micro-LED TV and Samsung’s The Wall completely blew people away six years ago, and in addition to being the largest micro-LED TV maker today, Samsung has been introducing interesting ideas, like transparent micro-LED displays, which it showed off at CES 2024. But years after we first saw those beautiful pixels, micro-LED technology has the same problems it had back then: it’s too big and too expensive.
What's the problem with micro-LED TVs?
Manufacturers still believe that the future lies in micro-LEDs. For example, TCL CSOT, which makes panels used in TVs not only by TCL but also by other companies (including Samsung), has recently started selling micro-LED TVs in China and, as far as we know, has no intention of reducing investment.
However, according to reports in the Korean business and financial press (via FlatPanelsHD), while LG and Samsung intend to continue investing in micro-LEDs, they are cutting back on their investment. Samsung has delayed its plans to ramp up production, while LG has already reduced the size of its micro-LED R&D teams and is considering moving more micro-LED developers into its established OLED business.
The problem is that the technology isn’t developing very quickly. Since its announcement, prices have come down a lot, but they’re still in the mid-six figures, partly because the technology is still limited to giant panels. And micro-LEDs have yet to see the huge improvements in efficiency and economies of scale that are starting to drive prices down: last year, industry analysts Omdia predicted that panels would fall in price by around 75% by 2027, but a year later and there’s no sign of that prediction coming true.
Even if Omdia’s prediction turns out to be correct, it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy companies like Samsung: according to specialist publication ETNews, Samsung has just held a meeting with key partners during which it told them that they need to drastically reduce production costs in order for micro-LED TVs to be competitive. And when we say drastically, we mean drastically: Samsung has reportedly told its partners that they need to reduce the cost by 90%.
There's no doubt that micro-LED technology is the next step in TV panel technology, but it's a step that's taking much longer than anticipated and we've been told by major manufacturers that it will easily be 5-10 years before micro-LED technology can be considered commercial. So, for the next few years at least, don't expect to see micro-LED TVs on our list of the best TVs – although if you've got a very large wall and an even larger budget, you might still be tempted.
