Hyun Suk Kim, CEO of Samsung Electronics' consumer electronics (CE) division, confidently announced that the company will be able to dominate the 8K TV market.
"I think Samsung Electronics is the only company that can produce and sell 8K TVs in various sizes for the time being," CEO Kim said in a press conference at a hotel in Las Vegas, where the CES 2019 exhibition was held on July 7th (local time). He added that the response from customers is also good.
"To commercialize 8K TVs, two technologies are needed. The first is the display panel technology, and the second is the image quality artificial intelligence (AI) technology that upscales low-resolution images to 8K," CEO Kim explained. CEO Kim also explained that Samsung Electronics is the only company that holds all of these technologies at this time.
"In order to go from 2K to 4K, the resolution is four times as high, which is the same when going from 4K to 8K,” CEO Kim said, “The technology of increasing the low-resolution image via software is called upscaling. And we have been developing a processor that supports this technology for the last three years," he added. "It will take time for a competitor to commercialize such a processor," he said.
He said the company plans to show 8K TVs from 55 to 60, 70, 80 and 90 inches.
Samsung Electronics said it will improve TV sales volume and margins that have been stagnant for the past several years.
Han, Jong-hee, director of the Video Display Division at CE Division, said, "We plan to shift to growth mode from this year," and confidently added, "We will show the growth rate corresponding to the top position of Samsung Electronics in the TV market for 13 consecutive years."
Han said, "We have greatly simplified the TV lineup over the past two years," and emphasized, "We had finished the work of focusing on premiums and large-format products by the first half of last year, and we will grow on that basis."
