Samsung-what a crappy company

[Xithras]

11. Lol, Samsung did not wipe out 10,000 jobs at Pioneer.

That's a pretty laughable (and probably deliberately misleading) misstatement right there.

Yes, Samsung did steal one of their patents, but that had nothing to do with them shutting down their television division. Pioneer shut down their television division because they literally bet the entire wing of the company on plasma television technology. It was one of the most idiotic moves in electronics history, but they committed the entire division to the technology without any backup plan or escape route.

Plasma, of course, was an inferior technology. Yes, the picture quality is great (I actually have a Pioneer Kuro in my living room, which I bought when the Pioneer TV's were being fire-saled as they shut down), but they are heavy, fragile, suck a horrendous amount of electricity, generate enough heat to warm an apartment, and are expensive to produce and sell. LED's and LCD's beat plasma by nearly every benchmark, and the picture quality difference wasn't enough to overcome its faults. People just didn't care about "true black" that much. Today, plasma technology is a niche market at best, and the Pioneer television division lost its arse. Other companies like Panasonic and Sony took a more balanced approach and produced both types of flat screens...and you'll notice that Panasonic and Sony are doing just fine and are still producing televisions today.

Pioneer is entirely responsible for wiping out those 10,000 jobs on its own.