LG will stop production of plasma TVs at the end of November this year. The South Korean electronics giant will focus on production of LCD and OLED TVs instead. According to the company there is too little demand for plasma TVs to make production economically feasible. Plasma TVs accounted for 2.4% of LG's 2013 revenue.
Reuters reports LG announced the end of the production of plasma TVs in financial documents it had to file to a Korean regulator. By ending the production of plasma TVs in November it aligns with the end date of Samsung's plasma TV manufacturing. Earlier this year also Samsung announced it would no longer sell plasma screens, in October 2013, Panasonic announced the same.
It's unknown how big the remaining inventory of LG and Samsung is, but it's expected that the last plasma TVs will be sold in 2015. The announcement of LG ends the era of plasma TVs. There are no major plasma TV manufacturers left. Plasma technology apparently was unable to compete with cheaper LCD screens. In it's turn, LCD should be replaced by OLED in the future . This TV technology is able to display deep black levels which was also a reason for some consumers to prefer plasma screens.
Although no plasma TV manufacturer has explicitly stated it, it's harder to decrease pixel size for plasma screens. And that's likely part of the reason why plasma TVs will disappear. More and smaller pixels are where the world is heading and with the inability to decrease pixel size much, it would be hard to create Ultra HD plasma TVs.
