Samsung to sell 55-inch and 65-inch 4K UHD TVs in June

(iTers News) - The race is on for control of still fledgling, but potentially huge 4K ultra-high definition TV market. To catch up rival Sony’s lead in the release of 4K TVs in the U.S. market , world No. 1 TV maker  Samsung Electronics plans to sell 55-inch and 65-inch 4K UHD TVs starting in June.

“Market research firm Display Search forecasts that global shipments of 4K TVs would jump ten folds from 930,000 units in 2013 to 9.87 million units in 2016. To keep pace with the potential, Samsung will add two more models - 55-inch and 65-inch 4K TV – to our 85-inch UHD TV product line and start to sell them in June, “ said Simon Sung, vice president of Digital Display Business with Samsung Electronics.

The roll-out announcement came just one month after rival Sony started to sell 55-inch and 65-inch 4K UHD TVs in the U.S. market in April, following its shipments of 84-inch 4K TVs in November 2012.

Dismissed as world's No. 3 TV maker, Sony is now scrambling to regain its past glory with a huge bet on 4K TVs, aggressively lining up a wide range of 4K TV models from 55-inches to 84-inches.       

UHD, or 4K TVs are a new generation of 2160p ultra high-definition TVs, which carries more than 8 million pixels, 4 times more than those of a 1080p full HD.

Gain head-start

As 4K contents production and broadcasting infrastructure is still premature, it will take a long while before the 4K TV goes mainstream. Yet, the 4K TV market is one of the industry’s most contested prizes ever, because that’s where a next wave of market opportunities lay ahead. For example, the U.S. TV market is increasingly getting polarized between a large-size upscale premium segment and a middle-size low-cost segment. Of particular, above 60-inch market segment is rapidly emerging as the most lucrative one, as a growing number of affluent U.S. consumers are rushing to buy them.

The above 60-inch market segment is where the forte of the 4K TV technology is, because the larger the screen gets, the higher resolution consumers are craving for.

According to market research firm, global shipments of 60-inch and larger TV would almost double from 4.30 million units in 2012 to over 8 million units in 2016.

To make up for deteriorating profitability in the low-cost commodity TV market, Samsung Electronics is focusing on that premium market segment.   

(Samsung's 85-inch 4K UHD smart TV) 

       Japanese TV makers like Sony and Panasonic are also looking to the 4K TVs for standing a chance to seize back the lost market leadership from Korean TV makers such as Samsung and LG Electronics.

When it comes to the 4K TV technology, Japanese TV makers are racing ahead of Korean TV makers, because their earlier ramp-up to metal oxide TFT backplane technology allows them to build cheaper and power-thriftier 4K TV.  The metal oxide TFT backplane is referred to as a grid of metal oxide thin film transistors deposited on a gigantic glass substrate.

Compared with a-Si, or amorphous silicon TFTs, the metal oxide transistors boast faster electron mobility and lower power consumption, and more importantly, they are smaller in size, allowing display makers to cram more pixels into a given screen space. Equally important, it costs less to produce TFT LCD panels using metal oxide TFT backplane technology. This helps explain why Sony undercut Samsung and LG on prices of the 4K TV. 

Upgradable, upscalable   

For example, Sony is selling a 55-inch 4K TV at a starting price of US$4,999 in the U.S., while fetching a 65-inch 4K TV for US$6,999.   

To catch up, Samsung focuses on innovative user interfaces and upgradability. For example, Samsung’s 85-inch 4K TV product line-up, which is now selling in the U.S. market, is smart enough not only to hear what people speak, but also understand TV viewers’ gestures, enabling them to raise volume, or surf channels with a command of voice.

Coming complete with a CPU and OS platform, the 85-inch smart 4K TV is also Internet-capable, allowing TV viewers to surf Web pages.

On top of that, it comes armed with a quad detail enhancement engine, a sort of up-converting process chip that can upscale any of 2K full HD, or SD contents into the 4K viewing formats. Performing 4 core tasks such  as noise-filtering, detail enhancements, picture quality signal analysis and definition up-scaling, the 4K up-converter processor engine will help make up for the unavailability of 4K content.

Coming up with what’s called as an evolution kit, Samsung’s 85-inch 4K TV is upgradable, too. The evolution kit is a sort of palm-sized breadboard that contains a CPU, a GPU and OS platform on a circuit board. Whenever new OS, or new features come up, the kit enables TV owners to upgrade their current Samsung 4K TV to accommodate new features and new standards.

“As no exact technology standard for the 4K broadcasting and TV formats is not yet decided, consumers are still hesitating to buy 4K TVs on concerns that their new buys will become obsolete.  We hope that the upgradability will help boost up consumer demand, relieving the concerns,” said vice president Simon Sung.

Photos & Videos by JH Bae