What They Say
Speaking at the 4K HDR Summit’s virtual edition, Maria Rua Aguete, Senior Research Director at Omdia said that the US is now at 52% penetration into the installed based of UltraHD TVs, with Western Europe at 38%, but that Chinese ownership is ‘minimal’. Western Europe is expected to take two more years to get to 50%.
“I am not optimistic about progress in 8K. The number of 8K sets sold is tiny, with just 6000 sets sold in Japan, for example,”
she said, according to the report.
What We Think
This just confirms the weak numbers reported a few days ago in an Omdia blog ( 0.13% of all TV sales) for 8K. TV set shipments continued to surprise in the third quarter of 2020 In January, the US CEA forecast more than 500,000 8K sets in the US alone this year (Consumer Tech U.S. Sales to Reach Record $422 Billion in 2020; Streaming Services Spending Soars, Says CTA). That looks very unlikely, now. However, I suspect there will be some big clear outs of inventory by Samsung around Black Friday, if the firm bought into the CEA view. Over the years, Samsung has been very quick to clear slow-moving inventory, in my experience.
Looking at the snapshot from the 8K association promotional website, I’m tempted to re-phrase the old Silicon Valley joke about Gallium Arsenide and say that “8K is the future, and always will be!”. However, more seriously, as we know, for LCD, “the pixels are free” so 8K will get here, but it’s going to be slow going. (BR)
