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OLED TV growth slower than expected

​The rollout of OLED televisions has been slower than industry expectations due to high manufacturing costs and a lack of technology breakthroughs, according to a new report.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury

LG 77-inch curved OLED
LG broke the record for largest 4K OLED TV with its 77-inch curved model. Andrew Hoyle/CNET

The rollout of OLED televisions has been slower than industry expectations due to high manufacturing costs and a lack of technology breakthroughs, according to a new report.

The forecast of OLED revenue for 2014 has been downgraded from over $1 billion to $795 million in a report from industry body NPD DisplaySearch.

OLED is still much more expensive than LCD to manufacture and a lack of shipments combined with low yields of OLED materials will keep the price high for the foreseable time, NPD says.

"The OLED material industry and related investors are justifiably worried about where the OLED material market is headed in the near future," said Jimmy Kim, senior analyst for display materials and LED for NPD DisplaySearch.

OLED is chiefly used in smartphone displays but the technology is currently used in a handful of displays from Samsung and LG.