​Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) is said to have delayed the production of its 89” Micro-LED TV, with production pushed back from May to sometime in 3Q this year.  The 101” model which the company also announced would be in production this year does not seem to have a production date as of yet.  Samsung is expected to begin production of the 99” Micro-LED it announced last year during the 2nd quarter, according to South Korean tech press and has already been producing the 110” version since last year.
Both the 99” and 110” models use PCB for control circuitry, based on LEDs that are 75um across and 125um high, however the newer models will be based on smaller Micro-LEDs that are 1/7 the volume, based on cylindrical measurements and are said to be deposited directly on a glass substrate containing the TFT backplane, rather than PCB boards, a process similar to that used by China’s BOE (200725.CH) for Mini-LEDs, which should ultimately reduce the cost.  That said, such smaller Micro-LEDs, while they allow for higher resolution displays, they are packed more closely together (.44mm for the 89” set), decreasing placement error tolerances and changing some of the characteristics of the Micro-LEDs themselves, particularly red Micro-LEDs. 
While we don’t know if the delay is related to the production of the smaller Micro-LEDs, the characteristics of those LEDs themselves, or the potential changes to the substrate of TFT configuration, we expect it will make little difference to Samsung’s TV sales and these sets are quite expensive and relatively few units are sold to consumers, but while Mini-LEDs are an extension of existing LCD technology, Micro-LEDs are not and will require far more R&D and interim modifications that existing LED based products.  That said, if the challenges of developing cost effective Micro-LED displays are eventually met, they have the potential to change the display industry over time.  Of course, many will (and have) predict the demise of existing display technologies, as they did when OLED displays began to appear on smartphones as far back as 2003, and again in 2005 when Samsung released its 21” OLED TV, and again when both Samsung and LG (066570.KS) showed 55” OLED TVs at CES in 2012, and while OLED has certainly become an integral part of the display industry, it takes time to move an industry with such high capital investments built into each company.   “I was taught that the way to progress was neither swift nor easy.”  Marie Curie

Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) has announced pricing for its Quantum Dot/OLED TV models, which are in pre-order mode.  While not all of Samsung’s 2022 TV line pricing has been revealed, the two sets are to be priced at $2,400 for the 55” model and $3,500 for the 65” model, which puts them at the top of Samsung’s 4K TV line in those sizes.  As both are 4K models, they would compare to Samsun’s Mini-LED/QD 90B series (2022) which sell for $2,600 and $1,900 respectively, putting the QD/OLED sets 34.6% and 26.3% more expensive than their closest sets in Samsung’s 2022 YV line.  When compared to LG Electronics’ 4K OLED TV lines (2021 models), using their most expensive models, the Samsung QD/OLED sets are 52.2% and 50.0% more expensive than the OLED sets.  While these are prices set by Samsung on its website, Amazon (AMZN) is offering the 55” model (no delivery date) for $2,197 to Prime™ members with an April 11 release date and delivery between April 15 and April 18.
The table compares Samsung’s QD/OLED TV pricing against similar Samsung Mini-LED/QD TVs, Samsung QD only TVs, and the most and least expensive LG OLED TVs.  We note that LG OLED TV pricing is based on 2021 models.  We note also that there has been some question as to the actual pricing for Samsung’s S95B models as some Samsung representative s are quoting a ‘corrected’ price of $2,200 for the 55” and $3,000 for the 65”.  While this might ultimately prove correct given the Amazon price mentioned above, the official prices on Samsung’s webstore are used below.

​At Samsung Electronics’ (005930.KS) shareholder meeting the company once again indicated that the Metaverse was one of two areas that it has selected as new growth businesses (the other is robotics).  Samsung’s Vice Chairman indicated that he would actively seek business opportunities in Metaverse which sparked renewed speculation that the company was preparing to announce or release a “Metaverse Device”, as he indicated last month at Mobile World Congress.  As we noted previously, no specifics were given although we noticed that the company’s Metaverse site 837X (Decentraland) is closed until March 21 when a new event is planned.  While this could be nothing more than new merchandise, it would be a good place to drop a few hints to the AR/VR community.
Given the extreme hype surrounding the Metaverse and Samsung’s expertise and history in the display space, it is easy to connect the dots as to Samsung’s eventual plans however as we noted in our 3/1/22 note, Samsung has been in and out of the VR space before and will likely take a more realistic approach to the AR/VR space in this go-round.  However they cannot keep the Metaverse chatter going forever without a distinct product so we expect at least a glimpse of a product before the holidays this year.  If nothing occurs by the end of 2Q we expect there will be a slew of questions as to why such a device/product has not been revealed and pressure on management will be intense, so unless we are wrong and the current Metaverse talk is just ‘Chairman Speak’ (Why promise if nothing is almost ready?) Samsung should be back in the VR/AR world this year.

Samsung Electronics’ (005930.KS) Vice-Chairman announced during a meeting with reporters at Mobile World Congress, that the company is preparing devices for the Metaverse platform, such as AR glasses.  He noted that ‘it is difficult to specify the release date right now, but the development is in progress with a focus on completeness.’  When pressed if that meant a product sometime this year he replied, ‘The quality of the product is important’, adding the general comment that ‘It is important to create mutual experiences between products and to give value to consumers’, all of which leads to no answer to any of the important questions concerning Samsung’s actual plans for the Metaverse.
While we would not expect much from Samsung executives in the way of product release dates, such replies were so vague as to be distracting and annoying, but given Samsung’s premier place in the CE space, it would be difficult for the company to not have a number of Metaverse related projects in development, particularly given their expertise in a number of areas that are key to AR/VR hardware development.  In 2015, in cooperation with Oculus (FB), Samsung released a VR ’quasi-headset’, a device that used a Samsung smartphone as the display, more to show what VR’s possibilities were to both developers and consumers.   In 2017/2018 Samsung released the Odyssey and Odyssey+ VR headsets, both of which were PC powered and based on Windows Mixed-Reality and Steam (pvt) VR, neither of which are still being produced.  The headsets were $500 each with controllers and had two OLED displays (1440x1600) that had an odd pixel configuration that had alternating pixels of red and green and red and blue. 
Despite favorable reviews Samsung terminated support for the Odyssey VR headsets in September of 2020 and the original Samsung XR website is no longer but Samsung has been developing a number of technologies that are applicable to VR, such as holographic devices, that the company has been quietly demoing for years and micro-OLED and micro-LED displays that have potential for AR/VR product development.  That said, Samsung would have to compete with Facebook’s Oculus brand, which is the most popular VR headset due to its relatively low price and admirable specifications.  As Facebook is obviously seeding the market and losing money on every device, Samsung will face the difficult task of creating a device that can compete, as we expect Samsung will not consider sustaining losses on a new product category for an extended timeframe.
Samsung is involved in the development of many display oriented projects, not only through its affiliate Samsung Display (pvt), but through affiliations with many companies and institutions with whom it has partnered.  On such that is still in the development stage has developed a way to produce displays with ultra-high resolutions, up to 10,000 pixels/inch, which is far above the more typical 400/500 ppi seen in most smartphones.  While such a project is still far from mass production, Samsung is one of the premier image sensor producers, has extremely sophisticated semiconductor capabilities, and has already developed Micro-LED displays for larger systems.  While each of these projects and the multitude of others that Samsung is participating in do not individually guarantee a commercial AR/VR product, we would expect that Samsung has little choice but to hop on the Metaverse train with at least some hardware this year or next.  Perhaps initially as a component or module supplier, but as the AR/VR market develops, it would be hard for Samsung not to participate.  The biggest stumbling block in our view would not be the hardware, but making the devices ultimately compatible with Samsung’s other devices, as while Samsung is big on advancing technology, they are there to sell stuff by ‘creating mutual experiences between products’, as noted above.

While Samsung (005930.KS) and Apple (AAPL) continue their tug-of-war for top billing in the global smartphone market, Samsung is still king in its home country of South Korea, with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3, the Galaxy A32, and the Galaxy S21 5G holding spots 1, 3, and 4 in the top 5 most popular models in Korea in 4Q ’21 (Apple holds spot 2 and 5).  However each successive series of Samsung’s flagship phones, the Galaxy S, have not been selling as well as previous year’s models, and Samsung has been looking for a way to stem that decline.  At least based on pre-order rates, Samsung might have found the right configuration to build back its flagship customer base, at least in Korea, something Samsung wants to push out to its global customers.
Indications, again based on pre-order rates, are that the recently announced Galaxy S22 line is seeing over 1m pre-orders over the last 7 days, an average rate of 145,700 units/day (day 1 saw ~300k), better than the 127,200 units/day seen with the S21 last year.  A bit telling is that ~60% of the pre-orders were for the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the most expensive of the three S22 models and the only one that supports Samsung’s S-Pen, a feature that drove many Samsung users to the Galaxy Note series which Samsung has tacitly ended. With those Note users wishing to upgrade older models, the logical choice among the S series is the Ultra, which we believe accounts for what we believe s a higher than normal share for this model.
Further, the Galaxy Fold 3 and Galaxy Flip 3 (combined) saw close to 1m pre-orders in the pre-release stage last year, and while they did not hit the 1m mark, sold considerably better than previous models.  The Fold 3 also supports the S-Pen but does not have a storage slot as does the S22 Ultra, a feature also seen in the Note line.  It remains to be seen if the Galaxy S22 series does as well globally but smartphone brands take strong (pre-release) orders as a very positive sign no matter where they come from.  The phones are available for pre-order in the US with an expected delivery date of March 3, with Samsung offering further encouragement by giving ‘pre-orderers’ 4 free months of YouTube (GOOG) premium, 3 free months of Spotify (SPOT) Premium, 6 free months of Sirius XM (LMSXA) streaming, 6 free months of OneDrive (MSFT), and a $100 Google Play credit.  If you are really nice, they will come to your house and clean your garage (just kidding on that one but it’s worth a try).  Samsung also mentioned that the new Galaxy S8 tablet series pre-orders are running at 2x the pre-orders for the Galaxy S7 tablet.  All three Galaxy S8 tablets support the S-Pen.

​While we still have some time before Samsung’s (005930.KS) 2022 Mini-LED/Quantum Dot TVs actually become available, we checked in again to see if the pricing of the 2021 models has changed for President’s Day, a state holiday (formerly known as Washington’s Birthday) that is observed in only 38[1] of the states in the US on the 3rd Monday in February.   The results were mixed, with 40.0% of TV prices in the 35 we track increasing, 14.3% decreasing, and 45.7% remaining the same. There was almost no rhyme or reason to those changes, although that leads us to believe they are likely inventory related, but the only identifiable pattern being the price increases on almost all of the low-end quantum dot models, which saw some aggressive discounting during the Super Bowl.  Other than that President’s Day does not seem to be a time to take advantage of TV discounts, at least not this year.


[1] Not Observed in: Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Rhode Island, or Wisconsin.  Georgia & Indiana celebrate Washington’s Birthday on December 24th and New Mexico celebrates President’s Day on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Yesterday Samsung (005930.KS) announced its latest Galaxy flagship smartphone and tablet lines, the S22 (smartphones) and the Tab S (tablets).  As these items were leaked to the point where there was little that was not known about them, it seems a waste of time to spend much time on same, so we show only the differences between the new models (S22 series) and the old models (S21 series) for comparison.  We see the main difference between last year’s models and this year’s models as the ability to store the S-Pen in the S22 Ultra, which was not possible with last year’s model, along with the details below, most of which are minor adjustments or silicon upgrades   Prices remain the same.  Categories that are blank indicate no change for that model y/y and categories that are missing also indicates no change.

Earlier this week we mentioned the BOE (200725.CH) LED display that was the basis for much of the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony, considered the largest in the world (uncertified as of yet), although Guinness certifies the display at Resorts World in Las Vegas as the largest, but there is contention in the world of massive LED displays, as Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) claims that its “Infinity Screen” at SoFi Stadium is “the largest videoboard ever created in sports” and is the only dual-sided, center-hung videoboard.  The Samsung display, which hangs 122 feet above the field, is 70,000 ft2, which is smaller than the abovementioned displays, but is certainly unique in shape and is 1.2 times longer and 1.5 times wider than the field itself and weighs 2.2m pounds. 
The oval display has 4K resolution and HDR10+, with pixels spaced 8mm (0.31 in.) apart, and works with the 2,600 other large format displays and ribbon boards positioned around the stadium, but what good is video without sound, so Samsung has placed 260 “JBL by Harman” speakers in the display frame, which it claims is equal to 1,500 home theater systems.  Of course, JBL (pvt) is owned by Harman (pvt) who was purchased by Samsung in 2017.
All in, there seems to be no end to the expansion of LED video walls across the globe and the competition for ‘largest’ will continue as LED modules become less expensive and more sophisticated, along with the control systems and software needed to bring them to life.  Years from now these displays will likely look a bit simple as LED technology moves to smaller die and micro-LEDs, but it sure looks different than 120 years ago (see below) when the best you had was lots of light bulbs and a guy whose job it was to replace the ones that burned out each day.
https://news.samsung.com/us/game-on-how-infinity-screen-samsung-will-bring-sundays-big-game-life/

Last month we noted that Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) has established a new and updated presence in the Metaverse during CES called “My House” where potential customers could create (sort of) their own digital home for “millennials and zoomers”, complete with avatars they designed, and stocked with a wide variety of Samsung products that they can interact with.  This new interactive site, which is an upgrade to the “Galaxy House Experience” that Samsung introduced last year, where visitors could interact with some of the company’s smartphones and connect with members of the K-Pop group BTS, gives users the ability to customize their ‘house’ through the same Zepeto (035420.KS) platform.  Samsung has indicated that the new iteration has reached a cumulative total of over 4m visitors since its release on January 5.

The “My House” experience starts with the ‘front yard’ where visitors can speak to other visitors or walk to other houses that have been customized (colors, finishes, etc.), albeit with the same layout, where you can walk through the front door and enter the living room, kitchen, laundry room, office, bedroom, or bathroom.  Each room has its requisite Samsung appliances that you can pick up, turn on, or see or feel the output, or even play games on the living room TV or office monitor, but surprisingly there is little information about the products, and most offer just short loops of images on the screens or allow your avatar to touch random keys on the game keyboard while the game loops on the TV.  There are choices that can be made, such as selecting a particular type of Samsung TV to watch, but it is a far cry from visiting a real Samsung booth at CES (pre-COVID) where product information was first and foremost and booth ‘helpers’ were willing to show you how anything worked and point you toward senior staff if you looked like you had corporate buying power.
As the Zepeto platform is available for smartphones, it is visualized in 2D[1] and is essentially a relatively simple walk-through with a few interactive points, much like a simple game or social site, so calling this the Metaverse is like calling a house cat a ‘wild carnivore’ because it eats meat based processed canned cat food.  So we place little credence in this Samsung attempt to step into the bold new world of the Metaverse.  If one looks at the evolution of selling on the internet, one of the most innovative advertising tools was the ability to spin an image in any direction to see parts of the item that were not visible in the static image, and most product channels still do not have that capability, with most using multiple clickable image views, so a cartoonish avatar that can hold a descriptionless vacuum cleaner while listening to a radio does little other than act as a curiosity that Samsung marketing feels obligated to present.  If Samsun were willing to offer up the real data on site visitors, such as age, lead generation, sale completions, and return visits, it might offer some insight into the characteristics needed to actually sell items in the Metaverse, as opposed to just promoting the idea that the company is a hip and happening Metaverse participant.


[1] We thank The Verge for providing My House screen shots.

​A survey by SellCell.com has indicated that 20% of Android users intend to upgrade their phones to the Samsung Galaxy S22 line to be announced next week.  The survey, which had almost 11,000 Android owners participating, pointed to the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the company’s closest model to the now defunct Galaxy Note line, as their choice (44.4% of those making a change), while the standard S22 is the 2nd most popular at 30.1%, followed by the S22+ at 25.5%.  Over the last few weeks the Galaxy S21 Ultra, last year’s model, has become the most traded-in smartphone in the Android world, accounting for 22.3% of all Android smartphone trade-ins, which some conclude is a result of the popularity of the soon-to-be-available Galaxy S22 Ultra, but as the new phone is not yet available for pre-order we find it hard to correlate that data, especially as the Galaxy Z Flip and the Galaxy Z Fold are also on the top 10 most traded-in list, having only been released 5 months ago.
While 20% of Android users wishing to upgrade to a new model might seem like a relatively small number, the multiplier of Android users is ~2.8b globally, which would translate to 560m users willing to upgrade according to the survey, but as with most surveys, those answering the survey tend to have a pre-defined conclusion that draws them to the survey itself, rather than a man-on-the-street survey that randomly chooses participants, so we have to temper the overall survey results, but it does reflect a bit on a survey done last year that indicated that Android users were less likely to convert to an iPhone in 2021 than in 2020 as that trend continues into this year, or at least until the new Galaxy models are released.
The survey went a bit further, breaking down those who expect to upgrade by gender, with 30.4% of those expecting to upgrade being male while only 14.2% of women seem to be making that choice, with those intending to upgrade to a Samsung S22 model, 61.5% were men and 38.5% were women.  But the biggest segment of ‘upgraders’ came from the 25 to 34 year old segment, where 27.3% of respondents were expecting to upgrade, higher than both the 18-24 (21.0%) and the 36-44 (24.0%) segments, with the Galaxy S22 Ultra edging out the other models in all but the 18-24 year old group.
As we noted, we temper the results of such surveys a bit, but the seeming popularity of the Samsung Galaxy Ultra, likely the most expensive of the three flagship models, would lean us toward the popularity of the former Samsung Note line, which was equipped with the S-Pen, which we believe was its most popular feature.  While the S22 line is expected to have S-Pen support in at least one model, the S22 Ultra, there is the possibility that will also migrate to the S22+ or even the S22.  If so, that could change what is now a bias toward the top of the Galaxy S22 line, but for now the survey would indicate that Samsung’s S22 line will be well received by Android users.