Samsung is building its own home in Silicon Valley, which will primarily concentrate on memory and display R&D. The Korean company aims to tap into the top-drawer pool of component, system and semiconductor talent here, and, of course, a lot of angel and VC investors.
Since 2012, the executives said, most of Samsung’s employees have worked outside Korea (190,000 of 286,000 last year). But some of the brightest lights are still in and around Seoul. For instance, even though the San Jose display lab headed by Brian Berkeley will take the lead for issues such as user experience, interfaces and formats, and driver electronics, the core display technology remains back at home base.
Interestingly, Berkeley said the emerging OLED technology now accounts for 29 per cent of all mobile displays (by dollars, I assume) and was a $10 billion business last year. Prices are still high, keeping OLEDs from reaching their full potential in TVs, he said, but yields for the displays are on the rise.
