LG says it will end the production of plasma TVs by the end of November
LG Electronics exit suggests end is near for plasma TVs — (Reuters) - South Korea's LG Electronics Inc said it will wind down its plasma television business by end-November, as a technology long overtaken …
Context & Ripple Effects
Plasma has been shedding backers for years: LG shut one of its four South Korean plasma panel plants back in 2007, other makers dropped the format in 2009, and Samsung announced in July that it would end plasma TV production this year. With LG's November wind-down, both Korean champions are now out of the format, and the syndication footprint — PC Magazine, Engadget, Consumerist and others picking up the Reuters report — shows how widely the end-of-plasma signal landed.
The exit also fits a longer LG pattern of cutting loose hardware lines that stop earning their keep: the company later terminated its money-losing smartphone business, and by 2024 LG and Samsung were closing ranks against Chinese display makers and OLED competition.
First-order effects
- Retailers and remaining plasma buyers lose their last major Korean supplier within weeks, leaving whatever inventory exists as the de facto final stock of the format.
- LG frees panel capacity and capital that had been tied up in a declining line, redirecting them toward the flat-panel technologies where it still competes.
Second-order effects
- Component and equipment suppliers to the plasma chain lose both of their anchor Korean customers at once — Samsung's July exit plus LG's — pushing any residual demand toward smaller or non-Korean panel sources.
- With plasma gone from the two biggest brands, price competition concentrates entirely in LCD, squeezing margins for every maker still selling into that segment.
Third-order effects
- If the sequence holds — plasma first, then Samsung's LCD panel exits, then the 2024 display consolidation — Korean manufacturers are systematically retreating from commodity display formats toward premium, differentiated panels, ceding volume manufacturing to Chinese rivals.
- For LG specifically, the wind-down is an early data point in a portfolio-discipline strategy that later extended to smartphones: exit businesses that lose money rather than subsidize scale.
The trend: Display manufacturing is consolidating around fewer technologies and fewer players, with Korean makers sequentially abandoning each format as it commoditizes and shifting the center of gravity toward OLED and Chinese-led volume production.