Samsung's AMOLED Tech was Tempting Enough to Steal
Samsung makes the best displays on the market. The display on the new iPad? It came from Samsung. That astounding new OLED TV? A samsung product. But then there’s the LG OLED TV which was announced at the same time. And the fact that an unnamed employee has been accused of industrial espionage.
Yeah, LG might have stolen Samsung’s tech.
11 people have been arrested in the theft of Samsung’s mobile display secrets, among them a Samsung researcher. The employees held jobs at either Samsung or LG, explaining how the tech got from one to the other. The main suspect was also found with 190 million won, equivalent to $168,000 USD. Apparently he was also expecting an executive position afterwards, and when the other company didn’t give it to him he tried shopping the tech around further.
Yonhap News reports that the tech that was stolen involved “small mask scanning,” which is involved with the manufacture of large OLED displays like the ones featured in Samsung’s upcoming OLED TV’s.
LG might have come by their tech legitimately, however. Despite the theft, LG’s tech does have a different technological base than Samsung’s. It might be that LG managed to miraculously close the technological gap that Samsung created.
Or maybe not. We’ll have to wait for the fallout of this to know for sure. Either way, it is really bad for Samsung. They had an incredible technical lead over their competition, so much so that Apple went to their enemy for the display in their new slate. Now? Who knows if that will last, if Samsung’s competition matches their next generation offerings.
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