I've read a great article this morning:
OLED Pricing, The Death of the $3000 TV, and why the future is now
"I am noticing on the pricing side of this forum that the price of a 65-inch LG OLED at retail is now below $3000 (from some retailers, at least some of the time).
Without discussing price, per se, and who you should buy from, it's important to understand this is a critical milestone in the development of OLED TVs. For the first part of this decade, it was a given that you could pretty much buy the best TV on the market for $3000 at 65 inches. You may have had to shop and you couldn't often do it at Best Buy, but you could do it.
What that meant was videophile-level picture quality in the largest generally sold size was $3000. Within a few years, two things changed, though. First, the availability of larger sizes became much greater. 70s first, then 75s. Even some 78-80s are around. Second, and more importantly, those $3000 TVs vanished. This wasn't a scheme by mfrs. to make more money -- Sony sells so few of those $5000 sets of theirs it's hard to understand why they make them at all -- but rather due to the death of plasma.
Arguably, plasma died 2 years to soon, given how long it took OLED to get to something resembling price parity. Fortunately, it's now there. I could -- without hesitation -- recommend that a friend go buy an LG 65 B series for $3000. It's likely going to be a very satisfying 5-10 year TV for most people.
But some things have become apparent based on LG's recent pricing action. This is a company without a meaningful upgrade in production capacity coming online for close to 2 years (when the new fab is producing). It has sales targets but a very finite unit limit. And yet it is seeking lower prices -- through promotion, retailer spiffs, et al. -- to find a way to "sell out".
That Panasonic is essentially out of the TV business and Samsung no longer sells plasmas should tell you all you need to know about how great that $3000 flagship market was, i.e. it wasn't so good anyone is still in it. That LG is not even pausing at $3000 for a 65-inch TV isn't surprising. The market up there is small, can't satisfy even LG's existing capacity (assuming high yields) and won't absorb even a fraction of what LG has on tap.
TV is not smartphones and LG is not Apple. There is no reason to spend more for most consumers and no technological change that justifies switching to the equivalent of a $650 smartphone (had Apple not invented the popular smartphone, they could never launch a $650 iPhone now either... but let's not explain why they still can or how their very invention created $99 smartphones, that's another post). None is coming. Many of you thought 3D was -- so did TV makers. It's already come and gone. Many of you like HDR -- so do TV makers. It will be profoundly less of an upgrade catalyst than even 3D was (never mind that 3D was in most TVs and HDR won't even get there for years, if ever).
There is nothing wrong with liking these video upgrades at all. But they don't move or make markets. In fact, TV sales have been falling for years (since 2010-11). That's important to understand because even though some of you might subscribe to conspiracy theories about the economy, it bottomed out globally in 2009-10 and has been solid since. The latest data from 2016 shows declines in TV sales and even optimistic forecasts out to 2020 suggests the era of 250+ million TV sales annually may be over -- or at least rare.
Whether or not TV is in a full secular decline like PCs, though, it's growth era is over. The Chinese market continues to show some positives, particularly with upgrading to bigger screens. No surprise when you can buy a 65-inch 4K set for $900! But we've reached a near end state, that looks like this:
1) Overall TV sales are flat/down/up a bit
2) 4K and smart tech are booming, but the latter may be maxing out in many regions
3) Sizes continue to trend upward a bit, but the market for 65+ inch TVs continues to be infinitesimal
4) Prices keep falling, arguably below levels once considered "floor prices", beneath which TVs wouldn't fall.
Looking ahead, we will see the bottom end of the price curve, something resembling a top end of the size curve and possibly a TV market that trends below 200 million units globally forever. Too many macro trends are happening with millennials globally that are pushing video consumption everywhere but the living room. These include the slow (but real) death of multichannel TV bundles. While I don't want to rule out that in 50 years, the world has 100-inch TVs in every home, I'd point out we also can't rule out that most of the world's coastal cities will be partly underwater by then.
For OLED fans, this is not bad news, however. It means LG's hope of carving out most of the upper end of the TV market will require lower pricing than currently exists. I'm fairly sure I've bandied numbers like this before, but it's worth again stating that the 55s will eventually be <$1000 at retail. The 65s will eventually be <$2000. Those prices might start to become visible soon; they seem unlikely to wait longer than the arrival of the 2018-9 models off LG's new fab. I doubt those prices are a bottom, especially with the sheer number of Chinese vendors that will produce LCDs with 4K and HDR and make $1000 at 65-inches a global reality.
I personally no longer believe one should wait before buying an OLED. I also personally will note that my TV is not yet at the age where I like to replace it and won't be until 2018. (Never mind that I can't currently accommodate a bigger set and might be able to by then, which would make this once-every-6-year purchase easier to optimize.) Your mileage may vary, of course, but at least you don't have to worry about the buyer's remorse of having spent thousands extra for "just one year more" of OLED. You will see next year's TV for less money, but not so much less that you risk "chump syndrome."
The closing thought here is on a successor to OLED. It's worth understanding that every pretender flat panel technology advertises itself as "cheaper than the thing that came before once we achieve scale". This claim has been made for OLED for more than a decade. Today, OLED is still not cheaper than LCD. It's not really even cheaper than full array LED backlit LCD, at least not at the only place we care -- retail. Yes, Sony's price is insane but again Sony doesn't make the market. Vizio/LeEco, Hisense, TCL and others make the market. That they don't produce a TV as good as Sony's for half the price isn't a technology problem, it's a "we don't need to" problem. They produce a TV that's pretty damn good or less than half Sony's price.
On an average basis, OLED TVs will still cost more than LCDs in 2020. They are not cheaper, no matter what manufacturing steps and materials are saved. But OLEDs are cheap enough that they will dominate the high end of the market as plasma once did. They will also become very important in the midrange (both price and size-wise) as plasma only did very, very briefly.
There is no room, therefore, for a new technology. To just enter the market in 2020, a quantum-dot emissive display would find it would need to be below $1000 at 55 inches and $2000 at 65. (Perhaps $999/$1999). The mainstream OLEDs will cost less than that but perhaps a "better" display could find some small toe hold at those prices. The QLED would fail anyway because the tsunami of new OLED makers once LG's fab starts producing and driving through the $1000/$2000 barrier will be massive. It might even be massive enough for OLED to win the TV market in the early 2020s (crushing LCD out of the profitable segments, if not most of the unprofitable ones).
For QLED -- or any other technology that's in the lab today -- the advantage will have to come not only in the increasingly irrelevant domain of picture quality (LG is already mainstreaming videophile level images, no one will care about "better" outside of places like this forum) but in manufacturing cost. Perhaps, for example, a QLED can be printed using inkjets and the materials are soluble from day one with 100K hour lives. Someone designs a roll-to-roll printing tech and can maybe even print the backplane. Then you have something special, albeit with its own challenges (lower TVs from $500 to $200 and you don't really grow the market... that's why the floor is actually here on the smaller sizes, there's no sense in selling $99 TVs in most of the world).
There is no reason to believe QLED will be cheap to make. There is less reason to believe something else yet to be invented (in fairness, QLED TV has not been invented so much as theorized) will either. As we head toward 2017, we can safely rule out an OLED successor before of any import 2025. I made similar comments about OLED in the early 2000s and was scoffed out and mocked. But I was correct then and will be correct going forward.*
Enjoy OLEDs. Push LG to make better ones. Encourage Samsung to re-enter the market. Hope the Chinese come soon; they are likely to dominate TV making in the 2020s no matter what happens in Korea. But when it's time to buy, don't worry you're too early. 4K/UHD/sub $3000 are already a sweet spot in the "when to buy" game. I'm personally holding off a bit more, but that's just because of my attitudes on waste, not on when."
-----------
* "I was duped in 2013 into thinking I was mistaken and that OLED was rule. LG and Samsung spent a lot of money at CES duping people that year. It wasn't until last year, however, that OLED was really a consumer product and arguably this year that it became a real one. Those dates are very consistent with comments you can dig out of the AVS archives. In short, I wasn't mistaken in 2005 but was in 2013. As the rock legends say, "won't get fooled again."
By rogo | 10-24-2016
________
TV business is big, Facebook and Tweeter is big, QLED (Quantum dot light emitting diodes: http://www.qled-info.com/introduction/ ) is not big.
But, Samsung thinks it can: http://www.consumerreports.org/lcd-led-oled-tvs/samsung-thinks-qled-tvs-could-be-the-next-big-thing/
Hundred years from now we might not watch TV anymore the way we do today. It's going to be much faster, it's going to be in touch with reality TV, on a day-to-day universal info highway and without any media controlling their agenda. We'll have google glasses and all the news and movies will be live. ...Wherever we are, even @ home.
OLED is now, and prices are going down ... 100%
OLED Pricing, The Death of the $3000 TV, and why the future is now
"I am noticing on the pricing side of this forum that the price of a 65-inch LG OLED at retail is now below $3000 (from some retailers, at least some of the time).
Without discussing price, per se, and who you should buy from, it's important to understand this is a critical milestone in the development of OLED TVs. For the first part of this decade, it was a given that you could pretty much buy the best TV on the market for $3000 at 65 inches. You may have had to shop and you couldn't often do it at Best Buy, but you could do it.
What that meant was videophile-level picture quality in the largest generally sold size was $3000. Within a few years, two things changed, though. First, the availability of larger sizes became much greater. 70s first, then 75s. Even some 78-80s are around. Second, and more importantly, those $3000 TVs vanished. This wasn't a scheme by mfrs. to make more money -- Sony sells so few of those $5000 sets of theirs it's hard to understand why they make them at all -- but rather due to the death of plasma.
Arguably, plasma died 2 years to soon, given how long it took OLED to get to something resembling price parity. Fortunately, it's now there. I could -- without hesitation -- recommend that a friend go buy an LG 65 B series for $3000. It's likely going to be a very satisfying 5-10 year TV for most people.
But some things have become apparent based on LG's recent pricing action. This is a company without a meaningful upgrade in production capacity coming online for close to 2 years (when the new fab is producing). It has sales targets but a very finite unit limit. And yet it is seeking lower prices -- through promotion, retailer spiffs, et al. -- to find a way to "sell out".
That Panasonic is essentially out of the TV business and Samsung no longer sells plasmas should tell you all you need to know about how great that $3000 flagship market was, i.e. it wasn't so good anyone is still in it. That LG is not even pausing at $3000 for a 65-inch TV isn't surprising. The market up there is small, can't satisfy even LG's existing capacity (assuming high yields) and won't absorb even a fraction of what LG has on tap.
TV is not smartphones and LG is not Apple. There is no reason to spend more for most consumers and no technological change that justifies switching to the equivalent of a $650 smartphone (had Apple not invented the popular smartphone, they could never launch a $650 iPhone now either... but let's not explain why they still can or how their very invention created $99 smartphones, that's another post). None is coming. Many of you thought 3D was -- so did TV makers. It's already come and gone. Many of you like HDR -- so do TV makers. It will be profoundly less of an upgrade catalyst than even 3D was (never mind that 3D was in most TVs and HDR won't even get there for years, if ever).
There is nothing wrong with liking these video upgrades at all. But they don't move or make markets. In fact, TV sales have been falling for years (since 2010-11). That's important to understand because even though some of you might subscribe to conspiracy theories about the economy, it bottomed out globally in 2009-10 and has been solid since. The latest data from 2016 shows declines in TV sales and even optimistic forecasts out to 2020 suggests the era of 250+ million TV sales annually may be over -- or at least rare.
Whether or not TV is in a full secular decline like PCs, though, it's growth era is over. The Chinese market continues to show some positives, particularly with upgrading to bigger screens. No surprise when you can buy a 65-inch 4K set for $900! But we've reached a near end state, that looks like this:
1) Overall TV sales are flat/down/up a bit
2) 4K and smart tech are booming, but the latter may be maxing out in many regions
3) Sizes continue to trend upward a bit, but the market for 65+ inch TVs continues to be infinitesimal
4) Prices keep falling, arguably below levels once considered "floor prices", beneath which TVs wouldn't fall.
Looking ahead, we will see the bottom end of the price curve, something resembling a top end of the size curve and possibly a TV market that trends below 200 million units globally forever. Too many macro trends are happening with millennials globally that are pushing video consumption everywhere but the living room. These include the slow (but real) death of multichannel TV bundles. While I don't want to rule out that in 50 years, the world has 100-inch TVs in every home, I'd point out we also can't rule out that most of the world's coastal cities will be partly underwater by then.
For OLED fans, this is not bad news, however. It means LG's hope of carving out most of the upper end of the TV market will require lower pricing than currently exists. I'm fairly sure I've bandied numbers like this before, but it's worth again stating that the 55s will eventually be <$1000 at retail. The 65s will eventually be <$2000. Those prices might start to become visible soon; they seem unlikely to wait longer than the arrival of the 2018-9 models off LG's new fab. I doubt those prices are a bottom, especially with the sheer number of Chinese vendors that will produce LCDs with 4K and HDR and make $1000 at 65-inches a global reality.
I personally no longer believe one should wait before buying an OLED. I also personally will note that my TV is not yet at the age where I like to replace it and won't be until 2018. (Never mind that I can't currently accommodate a bigger set and might be able to by then, which would make this once-every-6-year purchase easier to optimize.) Your mileage may vary, of course, but at least you don't have to worry about the buyer's remorse of having spent thousands extra for "just one year more" of OLED. You will see next year's TV for less money, but not so much less that you risk "chump syndrome."
The closing thought here is on a successor to OLED. It's worth understanding that every pretender flat panel technology advertises itself as "cheaper than the thing that came before once we achieve scale". This claim has been made for OLED for more than a decade. Today, OLED is still not cheaper than LCD. It's not really even cheaper than full array LED backlit LCD, at least not at the only place we care -- retail. Yes, Sony's price is insane but again Sony doesn't make the market. Vizio/LeEco, Hisense, TCL and others make the market. That they don't produce a TV as good as Sony's for half the price isn't a technology problem, it's a "we don't need to" problem. They produce a TV that's pretty damn good or less than half Sony's price.
On an average basis, OLED TVs will still cost more than LCDs in 2020. They are not cheaper, no matter what manufacturing steps and materials are saved. But OLEDs are cheap enough that they will dominate the high end of the market as plasma once did. They will also become very important in the midrange (both price and size-wise) as plasma only did very, very briefly.
There is no room, therefore, for a new technology. To just enter the market in 2020, a quantum-dot emissive display would find it would need to be below $1000 at 55 inches and $2000 at 65. (Perhaps $999/$1999). The mainstream OLEDs will cost less than that but perhaps a "better" display could find some small toe hold at those prices. The QLED would fail anyway because the tsunami of new OLED makers once LG's fab starts producing and driving through the $1000/$2000 barrier will be massive. It might even be massive enough for OLED to win the TV market in the early 2020s (crushing LCD out of the profitable segments, if not most of the unprofitable ones).
For QLED -- or any other technology that's in the lab today -- the advantage will have to come not only in the increasingly irrelevant domain of picture quality (LG is already mainstreaming videophile level images, no one will care about "better" outside of places like this forum) but in manufacturing cost. Perhaps, for example, a QLED can be printed using inkjets and the materials are soluble from day one with 100K hour lives. Someone designs a roll-to-roll printing tech and can maybe even print the backplane. Then you have something special, albeit with its own challenges (lower TVs from $500 to $200 and you don't really grow the market... that's why the floor is actually here on the smaller sizes, there's no sense in selling $99 TVs in most of the world).
There is no reason to believe QLED will be cheap to make. There is less reason to believe something else yet to be invented (in fairness, QLED TV has not been invented so much as theorized) will either. As we head toward 2017, we can safely rule out an OLED successor before of any import 2025. I made similar comments about OLED in the early 2000s and was scoffed out and mocked. But I was correct then and will be correct going forward.*
Enjoy OLEDs. Push LG to make better ones. Encourage Samsung to re-enter the market. Hope the Chinese come soon; they are likely to dominate TV making in the 2020s no matter what happens in Korea. But when it's time to buy, don't worry you're too early. 4K/UHD/sub $3000 are already a sweet spot in the "when to buy" game. I'm personally holding off a bit more, but that's just because of my attitudes on waste, not on when."
-----------
* "I was duped in 2013 into thinking I was mistaken and that OLED was rule. LG and Samsung spent a lot of money at CES duping people that year. It wasn't until last year, however, that OLED was really a consumer product and arguably this year that it became a real one. Those dates are very consistent with comments you can dig out of the AVS archives. In short, I wasn't mistaken in 2005 but was in 2013. As the rock legends say, "won't get fooled again."
By rogo | 10-24-2016
________
TV business is big, Facebook and Tweeter is big, QLED (Quantum dot light emitting diodes: http://www.qled-info.com/introduction/ ) is not big.
But, Samsung thinks it can: http://www.consumerreports.org/lcd-led-oled-tvs/samsung-thinks-qled-tvs-could-be-the-next-big-thing/
Hundred years from now we might not watch TV anymore the way we do today. It's going to be much faster, it's going to be in touch with reality TV, on a day-to-day universal info highway and without any media controlling their agenda. We'll have google glasses and all the news and movies will be live. ...Wherever we are, even @ home.
OLED is now, and prices are going down ... 100%