The TV market is tough, despite Samsung dominating it, the profit margins are low compared to other business like white goods and enterprise PC solutions. The problem is that allot of money has to be invested to make TV's flashy so they can appeal to customers and sell, but the returns are not high so a mistake made means losses, this low profit margin has hurt the Japanese companies allot.
The problems are where initially caused by samusng and LG under selling TV's with the Same feature set as Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Sharp TV's. This underselling to gain martket share damaged the profit margins that all companies could make, and now the same is happening to Samsung and LG by other newer, cheaper TV's hitting the market. Samsung has now been forced to the more premium markets to keep profitability.
This is why the top TV makers are pushing Oled and 4K TV's. Why you say, it's because only a few companies have the tech, and these TV sets will all be premium only, that's where the money is and that's where their headed despite customer thinking 4K is over kill and that it with Oled are to expensive.
Hopefully with the comming new TV tech, Oled & 4k, Sony with all their Japanese brethren will be in a better position to start making money. I just hope the botth Samsung and LG recognise their mistake and try to not ruine it again by underminding the othercompines. That way their is enough profit to be made for all. After all competition is good for consumers :)
