Samsung to end plasma TV production this year
Following in the footsteps of Panasonic, Samsung says it will end production of plasma display panels by the end of this year. — The Samsung PNF8500 is the last great plasma TV. — Sarah Tew/CNET — Samsung SDI has announced …
Context & Ripple Effects
Plasma has been losing manufacturers for years: LG cut one of its four South Korean plasma panel plants back in May 2007, another maker exited entirely in early 2009, and Mitsubishi discontinued its last rear-projection line in December 2012, thinning the field of non-LCD TV technologies. With Panasonic already having confirmed it would end plasma TV production, Samsung's announcement removes the other big-name holdout.
The story travelled unusually widely for a product-line retirement — Tech Times, TechSpot, Slate, Engadget, The Verge, SlashGear and Wirecutter all picked it up on or about July 2, 2014 — which reflects how much goodwill plasma still had among enthusiasts and reviewers even as volumes shrank.
First-order effects
- Samsung SDI winds down plasma panel output by year-end, so retailers and enthusiasts face a finite supply of final sets like the PNF8500 that CNET called the last great plasma TV.
- LG is left as the only major brand still making plasma panels, inheriting whatever demand survives from Samsung and Panasonic buyers.
Second-order effects
- With three of the biggest names gone, spare parts and replacement panels for installed plasma TVs become scarcer and costlier, shortening the practical life of sets people own.
- Samsung and Panasonic redirect factories, R&D budgets and marketing toward their LCD lineups, tightening price competition in mainstream flat-panel TVs where margins are already thin.
Third-order effects
- If LG follows the same exit path, plasma goes the way rear-projection did after Mitsubishi's 2012 withdrawal: an entire display category retired not by consumer rejection but by manufacturers consolidating capex into one panel ecosystem.
- The pattern — each exit triggering pressure on the next maker to justify keeping a low-volume fab open — points toward TV manufacturing concentrated in fewer hands and fewer panel types, raising the stakes of whichever successor technology the survivors back.
The trend: TV display technologies are dying through sequential manufacturer withdrawals rather than sudden obsolescence, as panel makers consolidate investment into a single dominant flat-panel ecosystem.