Nanosys Wants to See Quantum Dots Penetrate Into Mass-Market TVs, Says CEO

Lack of “channel access,” more so than the high cost of quantum-dot enhancement films, is likely why TCL North America says it won’t support quantum-dot TVs anytime soon, Jason Hartlove, CEO of quantum-dot materials supplier Nanosys, told us. Though TCL markets quantum-dot TVs “in most countries,” it doesn’t do so in the U.S., where $500 is the price point at which most TVs are sold, and TCL needs to “worry about scale,” said TCL North America Senior Vice President Chris Larson at the Display Week conference (see 1705220029). “I don’t want to contradict what he said,” Hartlove said of Larson. “But I think a big part of their issue is actually channel access in the North American market on those Black Friday sales,” he said. “Even having something that’s super-cheap and putting it up doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to get the kind of volume that someone else is going to, given the different level of channel access that they have.” TCL North America representatives didn't comment Monday. Nanosys has “always been seeking to sell more materials” for use in quantum-dot TVs for the mass market, Hartlove said. “Our primary business model is sale of materials, and so more area means more tonnage, more tonnage means more revenue for us. It’s the only way we really grow. So as we look into where we want to go, we want to see 10 million units, we want to see 50 million units, using this technology, and we know those figures very well. We know that that’s not going to be possible just playing at the high end. So we have architectures that will continue to bring down the cost of q-dot, and at the same time, we’ll continue to improve other implementations at the high end.”