Loewe is a German company that has a long and storied history in the business of making TVs so it should come as no surprise that the world's leading supplier of many of the best OLED TVs, LG Display, would give it more control over the design and production of the panels.
Starting in May 2024, LG Display will supply open-cell OLED panels to Loewe, which is essentially a bare panel without the integrated circuitry, at the German TV maker's production facility in Kronach. Of course, Loewe has been working with LG OLED for a while now – it started a strategic partnership with LG Display in 2013 – but this is the first time that it will have more control over the entire process.
"More or less, we get the glass from LG but we assemble the complete product," Christian Alber, Loewe's chief operating officer, tells me at a briefing in Berlin. This gives Loewe more flexibility to make its OLED TVs standout from the competition by allowing for more customization. The idea is that Loewe won't be buying in completed TV screens and then just building a TV around it, but will instead be able to tweak how the panels work with its own customizations.
There's also the added benefit of taking more of the assembly process in house to save on costs. Does that mean we'll see cheaper Loewe TVs? There's no official word on this yet but given its commitment to the luxury market, we wouldn't expect it to stray too far into the budget arena.
Loewe's commitment to making OLED TVs last
LG Display started offering open-cell OLED TV panels from its Guangzhou fab in 2019, making this new partnership with Loewe a long time in the making. "For us, we wanted to find a way to be different," Alber says, going on to explain how if it simply continued to use the same OLED displays as its competitors that it would be difficult to do this.
After all, its commitment to offering a premium OLED TV experience has always been clear from its unique design approach. We previously said that its concrete OLED TV is the kind of weird design icon we need more of, and Loewe's doubling down on its promise to that approach by taking even more control of the production.
The reason for this, Alber tells me, is down to an increasing focus on sustainability. He recounts a recent story about a customer who wanted their old Loewe TV repaired. The model was almost 20 years old but it was able to replace and repair the panels to give it six more years of life.
"If I buy cheap, I buy twice," Alber says, which is why Loewe is committed to building a durable product that can last and be repairable. Repairable OLED TVs is not something you hear a lot about, and for a product that is known for its high energy consumption, it's nice to hear companies taking more steps in this sustainable direction.
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