Does TCL Make Panels For Samsung TVs?

The brand you may spot in your TV’s bezel does not all the time truly inform you who manufactured the panel itself — a very powerful a part of the machine, because it kinds the image. The factor is that a lot of the global community’s TV panels come out of factories run by only a few international locations. And since there are various extra TV manufacturers than producers, the maths solely actually works out a method.

Most manufacturers find yourself shopping for their panels from another person. Samsung was an exception right here, not less than for its LCD TVs, till it shut that particular a part of its industry down. The firm had been making LCD panels for TVs for roughly three a long time, most lately by way of a sister firm referred to as Samsung Display. However, that industry stopped making a living, so Samsung wound it down to focus on OLED. Since then, the corporate’s TV division has needed to supply its LCD panels from different corporations.

One of these corporations is TCL — although the producer does not particularly carry that identify. The precise identify right here is China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), TCL’s display-manufacturing arm. It’s a fairly large order, too, contemplating LCDs comprise the majority of Samsung TV gross sales. Indeed, market analysis agency Omdia expects CSOT to provide round 7.3 million LCD panels for Samsung TVs in 2026. However, Samsung does not get all of its LCDs from TCL — the precise quantity for this 12 months is round one in each 5 LCD panels.

Weirdly, nevertheless, TCL also sells TVs under its own name, made mostly in Shenzhen, making it considered one of Samsung’s head-to-head rivals within the international TV market. Clearly, that rivalry hasn’t stopped the 2 corporations from doing industry with one another. Things truly began off with a manufacturing facility. In August 2020, TCL stated CSOT would purchase a 60% stake in Samsung’s LCD panel manufacturing facility in Suzhou, China. Basically, TCL’s panel industry ended up taking up a Samsung plant.

That stated, Samsung Display did not stroll away totally. It went forward and purchased into CSOT itself by paying $739 million, which made it the second-largest shareholder within the firm. In different phrases, Samsung Display swapped operating the manufacturing facility for proudly owning a slice of the corporate. The partnership goes deeper than that, although. In June 2022, Samsung Display additionally handed its LCD patents over to CSOT, in line with Korean commerce publication The Elec. By the outlet’s estimate, Samsung Display’s complete LCD portfolio of about 2,000 patents went to CSOT.

All of this has helped make CSOT considered one of Samsung’s foremost LCD panel suppliers. Still, that hasn’t stopped CSOT’s share of Samsung’s orders from slipping. Omdia estimates numbers for every year, and for 2026, the estimate is considerably decrease than final 12 months’s. CSOT is anticipated to provide 7.3 million panels for Samsung TVs in 2026, down from 9.2 million in 2025. The share is being eaten into by BOE, one other Chinese panel maker, which has been on a roll recently.

You can solely inform it to some extent, and it primarily has to do with the kind of TV. Again, CSOT’s work for Samsung is restricted to LCD panels for it. For its OLED panels, the corporate has a special set of suppliers. Part of the OLEDs — particularly QD-OLED panels, Samsung’s personal tackle OLED — are constructed by its sister firm, Samsung Display. The different kind of panels — WOLED, which is quite different from QD-OLED — is equipped by LG Display. In different phrases, your OLED TV is definitely not manufactured by TCL. For LCDs, there’s an opportunity it’s certainly made by TCL. Specifically, there is a one in 5 likelihood, as talked about above.

Beyond that, although, there’s often no means of telling which firm constructed the panel in a specific Samsung LCD TV. It additionally does not assist that Samsung has a historical past of blending panels from completely different suppliers into the identical mannequin — a apply some consumers have even nicknamed because the “Samsung Panel Lottery.”

The excellent news right here is that whatever the panel you get, you’ll principally get to take pleasure in the identical image high quality. In reality, RTINGS truly examined one Samsung mannequin in three sizes, every with a panel from a special firm. It discovered solely small variations between them. Amusingly, the panel that Samsung itself made for its personal TV did not pull forward both.