Samsung launched its last 4K players in 2017 and didn't add any new models to its lineup in 2018. A high-end 4K player for 2019 along the lines of its UBD-M9500 was in the works but has been scrapped.

Samsung has been competing for a narrow slice of a small market. 4K Blu-ray sales have been growing but the entire industry is declining.  Overall disk sales fell 11.5 percent in the third quarter of 2018.

Part of the problem is that Samsung is not interested in updating its formats which have fallen behind others on the market. Samsung could not be bothered adopting Dolby Vision and created its own version of HDR10, called HDR10+, which was designed for use in streaming and physical media. This ruled them out for home theater enthusiasts who either don't have HDR10 TVs or simply prefer Dolby's approach to HDR video.

Its rival Oppo was the first company to support both HDR10 and Dolby Vision but announced it was ending production of its 4K Blu-ray players in April 2018.

Sony showed off its M2 player at CES 2019 with support for Dolby Vision, and Panasonic recently released the high-end DP-UB9000 player in Europe and Australia.