Samsung Bows 55-Inch OLED TV at $8,999, Cites Better-Than-Expected Yields

Samsung turned heads Tuesday with the unveiling of its KN55S9C 55-inch Curved OLED TV that will be available Wednesday from Samsung.com at $8,999.99, some $6,000 less than LG’s curved OLED TV that began shipping last month. “I thought it was going to be $10,000,” said an enthusiastic Robert Zohn, owner of Value Electronics in Scarsdale, N.Y. For a retailer, “$9,000 is a million times better than $10,000,” he said.

Zohn had expected to begin selling the KN55S9C for $15,000 at the end of July before Samsung postponed delivery until this week. “It’s pretty amazing that it’s coming out for $9,000,” Zohn said. “I'm very, very optimistic with the new price point to sell this in the mainstream and to enthusiasts who will sit up close and get an immersive experience out of it,” he said.

Zohn has been allotted two Samsung OLED TVs that were due in his store Tuesday or Wednesday and has already sold one at the $14,999 price “so I guess I'll have to tell them about the price change,” Zohn told us at the Samsung event. On the $6,000 delta between LG and Samsung, Zohn said he has to evaluate both before making a definitive statement about performance but added, “I think we'll see LG answer that.”

We contacted LG after the news conference and asked us if LG plans to match the price of the Samsung, to which LG Electronics USA Vice President John Taylor answered, “no.” We asked if LG plans to make any price adjustments in the wake of the Samsung announcement and Taylor said, “LG’s Curved OLED TV, that’s been on sale in the U.S. since July 22, is a premium product that commands a premium price because of its superior performance and styling. It sells for $14,999.”

Zohn told us he'd be able to sell 100 of the KN55S9C TVs before the end of the year at the $9,000 price tag, but when we asked if he thought he'd be able to secure that number from Samsung, he said, “I don’t.” DisplaySearch, meanwhile, forecasts that only about 3,000 OLED TVs will ship in North America this year, Paul Gagnon, DisplaySearch director-North American TV research, told us. So far, only 300 have shipped worldwide through Q2, he said.

Joe Stinziano, executive vice president for Samsung Electronics America, wouldn’t quantify the number of OLED TVs the company expects to ship this year other than to say, “A lot … a lot more than I expected to sell six months ago, to be honest.” He told us “improvements in yield drove us to want to increase the adoption of OLED in the marketplace and allowed us to do a little more attractive price point.” On whether the company was surprised by the improved yields for a product that’s proved difficult for all manufacturers to produce efficiently to date, Stinziano said “no.” “This has been a long time coming,” he added. “We're just happy to be able to launch this in a way that’s meaningful for consumers.” He wouldn’t disclose production yields.

Samsung will begin selling the KN55S9C on its own website Wednesday and it will follow a “similar distribution to Samsung’s UHD and 8500 series plasma TVs,” Stinziano said. That includes specialty AV retailers, Magnolia and “people like that,” he said.

Like LG’s 55-inch OLED TV, the Samsung model features a mildly curved screen. On why OLED is curved and not flat when the industry has been promoting flatter and flatter TVs, Stinziano said, “The concept is that by curving the panel slightly and with the vibrant colors, we can deliver an experience that you can’t get on flat TVs today.” He referred to tube TVs from 20 years ago that were “convex” and said the goal then was to move toward flat. “Now we can get it to concave slightly to give you an experience that’s different.” He added, “It’s a subtle curve.” He said off-angle sight lines on OLED “are so tremendous that no matter where you're sitting with this TV, the subtle curve lets you feel more part of the experience.”

Stinziano emphasized the “breadth and depth” of Samsung’s TV lineup, citing the high-end plasma line, its recently launched 55-inch and 65-inch 4K TVs and its role as the “catalyst for the next phase of industry growth,” referring to OLED. With the industry fielding a more eclectic array of TV options than ever before, we asked Stinziano how the company plans to prevent consumer confusion over the competing formats, especially now that OLED is closer in price to the other new kid on the block, Ultra HD.

In differentiating products, Stinziano said, “OLED takes every source available today and makes it look better.” OLED is “all about picture quality, about blacks, about motion blur and all those things that true videophiles appreciate,” he said. With Ultra HD, “Resolution is resolution,” he said. UHD TV is “a little bit more about future-proofing for an ecosystem that’s not yet fully developed.” At the same time, he referred to Samsung’s Evolution Kit, which enables both OLED and 4K TVs to be updated as new technologies come out.

Positioning OLED and Ultra HD ultimately is “about choice and about what’s meaningful to consumers,” Stinziano said. He cited the 8500 series of plasma TVs, which was introduced “for someone who is an absolute videophile and wanted to get the best picture quality available … before OLED.” For someone who “absolutely positions picture quality as the most important thing, OLED is for you,” he said.

Zohn of Value Electronics said the difference in screen size helps differentiate OLED from 4K, noting that OLED is constrained to 55-inch screen size. His preference is OLED due to the higher contrast ratio of the technology. “Even if you downconverted UHD to 1080p and put them next to each other, my bet would be this would look better,” he said, pointing to an OLED model.

Features of the Samsung KN55S9C include a multi-view option that allows viewers to watch different programs at the same time. According to Samsung, “For the first time, two people can simultaneously watch completely different full-screen Full-HD content, even in 3D, on the same display, with corresponding audio and controls.” The two sets of active 3D glasses that ship with the TV have built-in “personal speakers” that deliver stereo sound to the wearer, and users can switch between the two sources via button on the glasses. The dual audio feature only works with the glasses, Samsung said.

David Das, Samsung’s vice president of home entertainment, attributed the ability to add the multi-view feature in the OLED TV to a faster response time, which also helps boost picture quality, he said. “The response time of the panel is so fast that we've virtually eliminated motion blur and crosstalk,” he said.

The KN55S9C packs Samsung Smart TV features including the Smart Hub interface that organizes content into segments including: TV, movies and TV shows, social, apps and photos, videos and music. A recommendation option lets viewers discover new programs to watch. All models are what Samsung calls “evolutionary TVs” that enable consumers to update hardware and software in future generations by purchasing an Evolution Kit, which are current selling in the $300 range online.

Samsung is supporting the OLED TV launch with a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign, Stinziano said. “As an industry we've been too quiet about the way TV has evolved,” he said, so the company is investing “tens of millions of dollars” in a new TV campaign called “Meet the Herndons” in which a multi-generational family is introduced to the features of Samsung Smart TVs. Highlighted is a discovery feature that helps viewers find programming that matches their interests.

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Whether by design or coincidence, LG reacted to the news of Samsung’s OLED TV launch Tuesday by promoting its earlier arrival to the OLED space. A news release from LG’s public relations office alerted journalists to LG’s massive billboard in New York’s Times Square that read, “Why wait? LG is ahead of the curve” and “LG Curved OLED TV - In stores NOW.”