Samsung Expands QD/OLED Sales Footprint
As we have noted, Samsung Electronics announced its QD/OLED TV line in March and began taking pre-orders in north America and a number of European countries, with regular sales beginning in April in the US and May for Europe. Samsung is now expanding sales of the QD/OLED TVs to Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, with the UAE, Brazil and other Central and South American countries in 3Q, and the rest of Europe by the end of the year. The QD/OLED sets remain excluded from the Korean market, Samsung’s home territory. We expect that supplies are still limited, despite the improvement in Samsung Display’s (pvt) QD/OLED yield rate and that Samsung’s heavy marketing of its QD/Mini-LED TV line as its premium TV offering would conflict with the idea of an OLED based TV, which Samsung has not offered and has denigrated in the past.
In our 4/18/22 note we estimated Samsung Display’s unyielded and yielded production for 2022, which we believe will fall to less than the general consensus of just over 1m units. As this is a small percentage of the ~40m to 50m units Samsung typically sells each year, the marketing conflict remains a difficult one until a decision is made as to whether Samsung Display will expand QD/OLED capacity, which we expect is being decided currently. While we could take the expansion of sales coverage as a sign that such a decision has been made, we hesitate to make such an assumption as the glass half-empty view would be that current sales have not been high enough to account for the potential production this year. We ascribe to neither view at this point as shipments for the QD/OLED models have only been in place for a relatively short time, giving limited data to Samsung, especially during a period when TV set demand has been under pressure. Given the potential investment involved in expanding SDC’s QD/OLED capacity, we expect the decision might be postponed until the end of 3Q or possibly to the end of the year.
In our 4/18/22 note we estimated Samsung Display’s unyielded and yielded production for 2022, which we believe will fall to less than the general consensus of just over 1m units. As this is a small percentage of the ~40m to 50m units Samsung typically sells each year, the marketing conflict remains a difficult one until a decision is made as to whether Samsung Display will expand QD/OLED capacity, which we expect is being decided currently. While we could take the expansion of sales coverage as a sign that such a decision has been made, we hesitate to make such an assumption as the glass half-empty view would be that current sales have not been high enough to account for the potential production this year. We ascribe to neither view at this point as shipments for the QD/OLED models have only been in place for a relatively short time, giving limited data to Samsung, especially during a period when TV set demand has been under pressure. Given the potential investment involved in expanding SDC’s QD/OLED capacity, we expect the decision might be postponed until the end of 3Q or possibly to the end of the year.
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