Samsung guarantees perfection

Can perfection exist in liquid crystal displays? Samsung Electronics thinks so. The company said yesterday that beginning tomorrow, it will exchange any Samsung-brand liquid crystal display monitors that have faulty pixels for a new one, within six months of purchase. Up to now, other LCD makers have only exchanged panels that had at least six faulty pixels; the industry assumption was that creating perfect LCDs is technologically impossible. The “bad pixel” is also known as a “dot defect” in which a dot, or pixel on the screen, does not show color, but turns white or black. A pixel is the basic unit of composition of an image on a television screen, monitor, or other kind of display. The number of pixels per inch defines the resolution, or quality of the image. “By seeking a ‘zero pixel defect’ we hope to meet the high anticipation of our premium brand customers,” said Kim Soo-bong, an executive vice president at the electronics giant’s visual display division. “In a sense, this is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to our customers for helping us reach the top of the market,” he added. “We plan to promote this concept aggressively.” Samsung is placing more importance on its LCD business, especially since it surpassed accumulated sales of 30 trillion won ($29 billion) as of late November. It began making LCDs in 1995. Last year, Samsung ranked No. 1 globally in LCDs, with sales of the displays amounting to $5.4 billion. Earlier this week, the company announced that it would invest 286.7 billion won in a second seventh-generation LCD production line. Its first seventh generation line, a joint venture with Sony Corp., will begin production early next year. In a separate development, Samsung also said yesterday that it sold 20,000 mobile phone handsets to U.S.-based mobile phone operator Verizon Wireless. The phones support digital cameras and high-speed data transmission. by Wohn Dong-hee