A recent report by Omdia on the TV market has the Korean press wringing its hands over the impact on the local display industry. According to Omdia, the global television market is witnessing significant shifts as TCL, the Chinese electronics giant, continues to expand its influence, challenging the long-standing dominance of industry leaders Samsung and LG.
TCL’s aggressive marketing and pricing strategies have paid off for the company, propelling it to 12.6% of the global TV market share in Q1 2024, up from 11.9% a year earlier. TCL’s revenue share, which climbed from 9.8% in Q1 2023 to 11.6% in Q1 2024 indicate that outside of the budget sector, where you would expect TCL to outgun the Korean giants, in the premium TV segment TCL seems to be overtaking LG comfortably.
Given that TCL’Ls first MiniLED TV was born in 2019, the technology has rapidly risen to challenge the status quo and the expectations for OLED. TCL also launched the world’s largest 115-inch MiniLED TV earlier this year and recently unveiled a premium frame TV in collaboration with high-end audio company Bang & Olufsen, all pointing to a growing confidence in making further inroads into the premium market. Subsidiary TCL CSOT has also acquired LG Display’s Guangzhou LCD plant for approximately 2 trillion won ($1.48 billion). This acquisition is expected to provide TCL with a stable supply of LCD panels, potentially driving down production costs and allowing the company to maintain its competitive pricing. However, Omdia expects that by 2027, MiniLED TV shipments will surpass those of OLED TVs.
That may not be great news for LG which also experienced a decline in revenue share from 17.0% to 16.7%. LG is placing its bets on strengthening content offerings through its webOS platform and reaping rewards from subscription services and ad revenues. It is unclear how this will help as the company face up to stiff competition from TCL’s aggressive pricing and expanding product lineup.
At the top of the list, Samsung’s global TV market share decreased from 20.3% in Q1 2023 to 18.8% in Q1 2024, with its revenue share also dropping from 31.9% to 29.3% over the same period. Despite these setbacks, Samsung remains ahead of the pack by some way and is now focusing on AI-enhanced TVs and interconnected smart home ecosystems as part of its strategy to regain market momentum. Again, it is unclear how much any of these innovations will impact or impede TCL’s encroachment on its market, but like LG, Samsung is also looking at squeezing profits out of its TVs from other sources, in this case that means the overall sale of consumer electronics products in a connected home. That’s something that LG is also doing, although Samsung seems to have a far bigger opportunity because of its reach into the overall consumer electronics market.
There is a general sense of concern that pricing and competition from Chinese companies will continue to erode Samsung’s and LG’s leverage as brand leaders in the TV market, and there is still some concern that the strategies around AI and software services may not be enough to stop the momentum of companies like TCL who are focused on chipping away at market share in every category of the business.
