Micro LED technology promises to be the successor to OLED in the TV market, but this will not happen anytime soon: market leaders LG and Samsung have reduced their investments in this technology because it is developing slower than expected. Instead, China’s TCL continues to work actively in this direction, and there is still hope.

LG and Samsung continue to lead the micro-LED TV market with products that have impressed the imagination at trade shows, but these TVs are still too big and too expensive to sell in very small quantities. FlatPanelsHD writes, citing Korean media, that both companies plan to continue investing in micro-LED, but the amount of investment is starting to decrease. Samsung has postponed plans to increase production, and LG has already reduced micro-LED research and development and plans to shift some of its employees to the established direction of OLED. Meanwhile, TCL CSOT, which manufactures panels not only for its own products but also for Samsung, recently started selling its own micro-LED TVs in China and has no plans to cut back on investment.

The problem is that the technology isn’t evolving fast enough. Prices have dropped significantly since the first models were released, but they’re still in the six-figure range, in part because only large panels are available. Increasing production efficiency and reducing manufacturing costs due to increased production scale. Last year, Omdia analysts predicted that prices for micro-LED TVs would fall by 75% by 2027, but a year later, there’s no sign of that forecast coming true. And even if that happens, Samsung needs more: The company recently held a meeting with its key partners and informed them that prices need to be reduced by 90% for micro-LED TVs to be truly competitive.

There’s no doubt that this technology is the future of TVs. But the transition to micro LEDs will take longer than expected, perhaps five to 10 years before the solution is truly commercial. And for now, these TVs will remain the most expensive offerings from leading manufacturers.