If you were getting excited about the prospect of paying $10,000 for a 55″ OLED TV from Samsung or LG, this may put a damp on your project. Both companies will probably won’t ship their television in 2012. According to market researchers, it is simply very hard to mass-produce those panels with acceptable yields (ratio vs. good and defective units) so that selling those new TV is a profitable business.
Yields have always been a problem with displays in general. This comes from the fact that the larger a display is, and the more likely there will be a problem somewhere on it that makes it unusable during manufacturing. In any case, TV manufacturers are usually able to work those issues out, and the relatively high price of the 55″ OLED TV sets does take that into account – to a point.
Now, it’s really a matter of time until both LG and Samsung reach yields that they are comfortable with. Apparently, this will not happen in 2012 and it’s not clear when it would happen in 2013. What do you think and at what price price point would you get an OLED TV?