Hisense is now the third-largest TV maker, in terms of market share, in the world, announced Hisense American CEO Jerry Lin at the company’s press conference. Hisense has a 5.8% share of the worldwide market, and a 16.3% share of the Chinese market.
Lin believes that Hisense’s success comes from its culture. The name means ‘trustworthy’ in Chinese. To support this, Hisense will be offering a four-year warranty on all of its UltraHD TVs this year.
In 2015, Hisense took over Sharp’s TV factory in Mexico, and began to license the brand name in North and South America (Another TV Market Exit by Sharp). In 2016, the company will begin to produce Sharp-branded products for B2C and B2B use.
Mark Viken is Hisense’s VP of marketing, and is formerly of Sharp. He discussed the ‘ULED’ brand. While ULED 1.0 was UltraHD, and 2.0 added quantum dots and more local dimming zones, v3.0 will be launched this year. This third phase adds full array LED backlights; increases dimming zones to 300; and boosts peak brightness to 1,000 cd/m². The TVs will also cover 95% of the NTSC and Rec.2020 colour gamuts.
The ‘Lasercast TV’ – a UST projector which has been shown in the past – was mentioned. This unit outputs an image covering 84% of NTSC. Hisense “believes that panel-free display is the future of home entertainment”, said Viken. An UltraHD model will be launched in the spring.
With the combination of the Sharp and Hisense brands, Hisense aims to be the third-largest TV maker in the US market this year, for both revenue and sales. It is currently in eighth place.
Director of product marketing, Chris Porter, discussed the company’s new TVs. There will be 22 models this year, with 1920 x 1080 and UltraHD resolutions. All UltraHD models will feature HDR processing, based on the specification recently released by the UltraHD Alliance.
The H3 series will be the entry-level models (20″ and 32″). Moving up the range, the H4 (30″, 40″, 48″) will come next, followed by the H5 (32″, 40″, 43″, 50″), H7 (43″, 50″, 55″, 65″), H8 (50″), H9 (curved 55″) and H10 (curved 65″) TVs.
Viken showed slides highlighting the main benefits of the H7 – H10 lines. These are designed to bring “HDR to the masses”, with the H7 TVs starting at sub-$400.
Hisense is launching a promotion with Nascar this yearThe H7 line features HDR processing, an UltraHD upscaler, UltraHD media player and receiver, octa-core processor, smart functionality and direct-LED backlights (65″ is is edge-lit). The H8 line adds multi-zone local dimming, and the H9 line adds full-array local dimming and HDR smart peaking. Quantum dots are featured on the H10 TV.
For Sharp TVs, Mary O’Neill came on-stage. She is a senior marketing manager for the Sharp brand.
There will be 25 new Sharp TVs this year, from 32″ – 75″. Some of these will be QD and curved sets, a first for Sharp models. Four of the TVs will use the Roku smart platform. Like the Hisense-branded products, all UltraHD TVs will feature HDR processing,
Sharp’s new models will be the N3000 (32″, 40″, 50″), N4000 (32″, 43″, 50″, 55″), N5000 (40″, 50″, 55″, 60″, 65″), N6000 (43″, 50″, 55″), N7000 (43″, 50″, 55″, 60″, 65″, 70″) and N8000 (70″, 75″) ranges. The N3000 – N5000 TVs will be HD and FullHD sets, with MHL, dual- or quad-core processors, smart functionality (N4000 and up) and direct-LED backlights (65″ N5000 is edge-lit).
UltraHD enters the range with the N6000, which features Sharp’s AquoMotion technology. Like the other UltraHD TVs produced by Hisense, this range will have an UltraHD media player and receiver and an upscaler. The same applies to the N7000 and N8000 (also with quantum dots and dynamic gamma) TVs.
