Samsung Electronics Co Ltd launched its first OLED TV on Thursday according to Reuters, taking the ultra-thin technology into a nascent market despite tenacious production challenges that keep costs high while prevailing LCD screens only get better and cheaper.

Production constraints are a key problem.

Samsung is producing OLED screens for TVs from a small pilot line and some analysts estimate the yield at just 30 percent - with seven out of 10 screens from the line faulty, largely due to difficulties in spreading organic light emitting materials evenly across large screens.



Although many industry experts believe OLED will eventually be the next big thing, they do not think it will manage to do to LCDs what LCDs did to bulky cathode ray tube sets: almost completely replace them in the space of just several years.

Samsung's $13,000 price tag on its curved 55-inch OLED television is the same as similar offerings from LG Electronics Inc, some five times more than popular LCD equivalents.