Samsung has completed the spin-off of its LCD display business, establishing Samsung Display Co. as a separate 20,000-employee entity under the Samsung umbrella, forming the world's largest display company, the company announced today. Despite LCD sales of 22.7 trillion won (about $20.1 billion) in 2011, the company took a 750 billion won (about $665 million) loss last year, prompting the spin off.
The company also announced that the new subsidiary will be merged with Samsung Mobile Display, the company's OLED arm, on July 1st. According to Samsung management, Samsung Display Co.'s focus will primarily be on OLED going forward, and the new company will maintain separate LCD and OLED divisions. Currently, Samsung Electronics owns 100 percent of the shares in Samsung Display Co. and 64.4 percent of the shares in Samsung Mobile Display (Samsung SDI owns the rest), so there are no constraints on the merger. Hopefully, the new organizational structure will allow Samsung to more easily shift over resources to OLED production as demand for the newer panels increases.
Hyunhu Jang contributed to this report.