It’s Samsung vs. Samsung in a new display sector

DAEGU ― Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI, sister firms in the Samsung Group, are preparing to compete fiercely ― against one another. Samsung SDI announced in May that it had developed a 17-inch organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, at the time the largest of its kind in the world. Samsung Electronics announced yesterday at the International Meeting on Information Displays that it was also entering the OLED market. At the exhibition in Daegu, the two companies exhibited large OLED displays. An OLED is a next-generation display that can be used for television sets or monitors. Currently, the monitors are mostly used for small cellphone displays since they are only a third the thickness of a liquid crystal display monitor. Compared to liquid crystal displays or plasma display panels, OLEDs process images at twice the speed and consume half the power, but are technologically more difficult to produce. The products the two firms are developing are slightly different, as were the products that they displayed yesterday at the exhibition. Samsung SDI uses a low-temperature poly-silicon method, while Samsung Electronics employs an amorphous silicon method. The poly-silicon method is expensive, but provides high-quality images. The amorphous-silicon method produces images that are not as clear, but it is more cost-competitive. “In the small OLED market, our product sectors are entirely different, but we are competitors in the large OLED market,” said Samsung Electronics’ LCD president Lee Sang-wan. Mr. Lee was speaking at a press briefing announcing Samsung Electronics’ entry into the OLED market. Samsung SDI vowed not to ditch its OLED business. “We developed the technology for large OLEDs in 2001,” an SDI official said. SDI also has the “painful memory” of turning over its TFT-LCD technology to Samsung Electronics in the 1990s. “This incident is a clear example of Samsung’s management methods: The group tries to raise the competitiveness of its companies through fierce internal competition,” an industry analyst said. “When competitive superiority becomes clear, the group will probably sort out the traffic.” by Lee Hyun-sang