Ch. 4 - The Marketing Environment

Since the inception of the company, LG Display has been developing market leading products and technologies. Current generation TFT-LCD/LED displays are available for wide demographics, from teens who love to play video games and access social media while they are watching television to grandparents who like to enjoy their TV shows and news with crystal clear display, not to mention large fonts.

Earlier this year, LG Display announced a curved 55-inch OLED Smart TV at the CES and it is available now for sale at $14,999. As Samsung introduced their own OLED TV followed by LG, LG's initial $15,000 price was dropped to $10,000. Ignoring the fact that the TV is curved and equipped with the newest technology, the price may be too high for most people. LG knows that, and they are mostly targeting early adopters who want to indulge privilege viewing experience that comes with the price for now.

The OLED TV era is not mature yet and as with other technologies, the affordable OLED TVs will be available for some time, or years, later until it reaches a point where middle income people can accord one of these televisions.

In one of many efforts to reach that point, LG strategically planned to lead the next generation television industry while their TFT-LCD/LED market was still growing, they purchased WRGB OLED panel technology from Eastman Kodak company. This strategic investment soon paid off with LG Display's integration of WRGB OLED panel technology and they were able to produce OLED televisions for consumers.

Also, in order to reduce the manufacturing cost, LG Display has invested approximated $706 million to build a new 8th Generation fabrication facility for OLED display panel production and they will be able to produce large area OLED display panels from 1st quarter of 2014.

According to DisplaySearch, the OLED TV panel market will grow as large as $3 billion by 2015 and LG Display is far ahead.