As you all probably know by now, Samsung Display is giving up on LCD manufacturing in favor of Quantum Dot LED (QD-LED), with the company planning to invest $11 billion in the latter display technology by 2025. But although QD-LED seems to be the future of Samsung Display, the company is already working on a successor to this technology. It’s called QNED and according to a recent reports from ZDNet Korea citing UBI Research, Samsung Display is expected to start investing in QNED manufacturing in the second quarter of 2021.

What is QNED technology?

Samsung’s QNED technology is not entirely new but it’s slowly becoming a hot topic in the display industry. QNED stands for Quantum dot Nanorod LED, and as detailed by OLEDNet a couple of months back, it uses oxide TFT and quantum dot color filter technologies similar to QD-OLED. The main difference between QD-OLED and QNED lies in the pixel material and the pixel manufacturing technology itself. Samsung creates QNED pixels by using an ink jet method to spray nanorod LEDs dispersed in a solution into a pixel area. The pixels are then self-aligned with the help of an electric signal.

For future customers, QNED technology promises to deliver superior contrast ratios, higher brightness levels, and faster response times compared to existing display solutions.

When can we expect Samsung’s first QNED TVs to be commercialized?

According to UBI Research, Samsung Display is likely to start manufacturing 30,000 QNED panels per month in Q2 2021. The source also claims that once Samsung’s QNED-based TVs will be commercialized, they will pose a major threat to LG’s WOLED solution.

Realistically speaking, QNED TVs are unlikely to hit the market next year because Samsung Display still needs to address some issues. Although production costs are said to be lower compared to OLED, micro-LED, and QD-LED, the aforementioned ink jet manufacturing method is time consuming and the company is now working on making it viable for mass production. As an emerging technology likely to succeed QD-OLED, it may take a few more years before QNED becomes mainstream.