Samsung puts high bounty on 55-inch curved OLED TV

Samsung has priced its debut 55-inch OLED TV at an eye-watering $13,000, during a CE Week trade show in New York. Interestingly, the brand says it will launch with a curved model (pictured above) rather than a traditional flatscreen, presumably to trump arch rival LG, which has also promised to introduce a curved OLED screen before the year is out.

The announcement is part of increasingly bizarre brinkmanship between the two South Korean brands regarding the notoriously difficult to manufacture technology. The pair have repeatedly 'launched' OLED at various trade events over the past two years, without ever actually shipping much of anything. As yet, only LG has managed to put a screen on sale in Korea, with cumulative sales measured in hundreds rather than thousands of units. The UK is slated to be the second territory to get the revolutionary widescreen TV tech in July.

Samsung's actual distribution plans remain a mystery. As with the LG screen, the curved Samsung OLED is a Full HD model. This puts the hyper expensive technology out of kilter with the rapid LED LCD deployment of next generation 4K Ultra HD TVs, which has already begun. Rivals Sony and Panasonic have already shown prototype 4K Ultra HD OLED screens, which are expected to debut (somewhere) during 2014. Samsung has also pledged to launch two new 4K LED LCD models this year, with 55- and 65-inch screen sizes.

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