Samsung: Blu-ray Has Five Years Left, OLED the Next Big Thing

Since the launch of the format, Samsung has been one of the pioneers of Blu-ray Disc player hardware. But oddly enough, the company believes that Blu-ray Disc will have a much shorter life span than DVD.

Despite having been mostly on the winning side of the high-definition format war, Samsung believes that Blu-ray Disc will only have about five years left in it.

"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn’t give it 10," said Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK, to Pocket-lint.

At the current moment, though, Blu-ray Disc sales are brisk for the Korean electronics manufacturer. "It’s going to be huge," said Griffiths. "We are heavily back-ordered at the moment."

Strangely, Samsung believes that the next big thing after Blu-ray Disc for the company won’t be another media format, but rather a new generation of television technology – specifically OLED displays.

Samsung claims that its OLED technology is ready, but is being held back from market due to high manufacturing costs. "We will launch the OLED technology when it’s at a price that will be appealing to the consumer, unfortunately that’s not yet," explained Griffiths, adding that 2010 might be the year OLED starts hitting mainstream. "It’s gonna be big, but at the moment it’s a great story, not commercial, product."

While there is little debate that OLED is an exciting avenue for the future of displays, it does seem a little odd that Samsung is putting its faith in a display technology, while showing pessimism for a media format that could provide content for such OLED products.

Regardless, five years is a ways off for Samsung’s product cycle, and in the meantime it will focus on selling more Blu-ray Disc players and rolling out LED backlit LCDs.