RAM crisis could be over "end of next year or early 2028", says LG as it talks OLED TV tech with T3

LG has been making consumer OLED TVs for a long while now – since 2013, in fact – and it shows no sign in slowing down. There's just one kink in the road – the ongoing RAM crisis.

As with just about every tech firm right now, LG is forced to navigate its way around the rising prices and scarcity of components due to AI data centres gobbling them up like Hungry Hippos. Anything that requires RAM or storage has been affected, and that includes TVs.

"That is a very big challenge," revealed the company's head of customer display experience, Baek Sun-pil, to T3 during IFA in Germany.

However, he also explained that LG is managing to counter some hardware barriers with software optimisation: "From our side, our homework was, 'how can you make our operating system more optimised?'

"We managed to get the same performance from lower memory. Higher performance, even."

LG has also been working further with its hardware partners to lessen the impact: "We are in free discussion with the memory guys," he added.

"We are in discussion for the next year and the years later. So we are well prepared."

But like everyone in the tech industry, Baek is looking forward to when the crisis finally abates. Something he told us could happen in a year or so: "I think it's not because of the TV industry, but because of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) and other things.

"But end of next year or early 2028," he predicted as a possible timescale for the industry to start to normalise again.

Future OLED TV innovation

Thankfully, reducing the costs of components isn't LG's only drive to make OLED TVs more accessible.

The display executive also explained to us that he wants to see larger screen sizes reduce in price in the coming years: "How can we deliver a bigger screen size for a more affordable price?" he asked.

"I think that's also very challenging. For example, the 97-inch OLED is something like £20,000, while a normal OLED TV is just £1,000. That's too much of a gap."

Certainly, it could be the next bastion for OLED development, to help encourage existing OLED TV owners to upgrade: "When changing, we see them changing from 65 (inches) to 75, 75 changing to 80, so bigger screen sizes.

"And AI will help drive [upgrading] too, of course. We support AI functions and TVs will soon include more agentic AI features."

But what about 8K? The industry has largely gone quiet on the next-gen resolution: "4K is the major stream. Hollywood studios currently have greater interest in 4K than 8K, as content production and distribution remain largely centred on 4K."

The upshot of this is that, buy a new 4K HDR OLED TV today – such as the LG C6 or new Wallpaper TV for 2026 – and you shouldn't need to worry about an upgrade for half a decade or more.

There's no sign of 4K being superseded anytime soon, while LG is doing everything in its power to keep the impact of RAMageddon away from consumers. The only question you'll likely still have is, "Will my wall fit an 80-inch TV or above?" Especially when prices start to come down.

And that's not a bad quandary to face.