by Paul Gray, Director of European research, NPD DisplaySearch
One word summed up IFA 2014: curved. We asked NPD DisplaySearch’s director of European research, Paul Gray, what his take was on this trend…
Samsung provided massive promotion of its curved TV range, as it sought to defend and even extend its lead in the European TV market. Its booth provided demonstrations to prove that curved TVs were brighter, offered better viewing angles and richer colours. Scientific claims were made that 4300mm was the optimum curvature and a massive 105-inch 5K 21:9 wowed visitors. All other brands had curved sets on display and generally offered them as premium models, extending the trend seen at CES where curved product concepts were displayed by all the big Chinese brands. We suspect that these are largely defensive products as little effort was being made to build a value proposition around the curvature. Retailers appear to be very split on curved sets; some love them, others do not. However, tactically most retailers will be looking to develop alternative sources to Samsung simply to apply pressure.
How do you think this trend will affect the market?
We remain unconvinced by the claimed advantages of curved TV and see it as a fashion in the high end. The feature costs around 20% more due to extra processes, more mechanical components and additional shipping costs from a larger box size. It is not a case that process innovation can bring it below a flat panel. We expect that Samsung (and imitators) will use it successfully in the high-end but ultimately the market will bring on a different feature to replace it. We have seen similar fashions in the past, such as picture-in-picture video a decade ago.
What other major trends did you note in display technologies at IFA?
LGE’s OLED screens were bigger than ever and the company fulfilled their promise to demonstrate a 4K 65-inch and 77-inch. The displays looked better than ever, there is still something special about OLED and they were instantly recognisable at a distance. With no visible bright pixel defects, LG Display’s heroic process engineers are working as hard as ever. LGD had also seeded samples to most other brands that had 55-inch OLED concept products. Interestingly only Panasonic showed a 65inch 4K OLED, suggesting a preferential position amongst LGD’s potential customers. At the same time, quantum dot LCD backlights were visible on many booths and promise to narrow the gap between OLED and LCD performance especially when combined with switchable direct backlights. One has to hope that broadcasters’ wishes to produce content with high dynamic range and deep colour come to fruition in Ultra-HD standards.
What about other products? Any that particularly grabbed your attention?
Probably the most impressive new product at the show was Samsung’s Galaxy Note Edge. This product really does bring something useful to the consumer by its wraparound screen on the right hand side. Not only is the extra screen useful for discrete notifications, but the image is so bright and sharp on the whole device that it does not look like a display at all – the eye is fooled into it appearing simply to be a printed page. The same high saturation and sharpness was visible on all the handheld OLED displays. To finish the curved theme, wearables were visible everywhere in the show. LGE showed their impressive-looking G-Watch. IFA visitor s crowded the round version (G-Watch R) but seemed much less interested in the rectangular screen version. The launch of ‘Watch’ by Apple looks to fall between the dramatic curved screen edge of Galaxy Note and LGE’s round screen product which looks like a robust diver’s watch.
Reprinted from IFA International 2014