What They Say
Omdia published a blog post about the results in the TV market in Q3 and said that the market grew 15% in volume terms from last year to 62.9 million units and 10.9% above forecast. The regional growth was quite different (see chart). Total shipments for the year are down, although developed regions are up. China was weak in Q3 on rising prices caused by panel price increases. UHD TVs were 58.6%, but 8K sets were just 82.5K and 0.13% of all TV sales.
OLED sets were up and SmartTVs are up to 85.9% of the market from 79.2% last year. North America saw the highest ever unit shipments of 16.4 million. Western Europe was also high at 7.6 million, but still below Q4 levels.
“Clearly the current trend is more than just release of pent-up demand and inventory replenishment. With the Northern Hemisphere winter and renewed lockdown measures, TV viewing is becoming more valuable to consumers. We can expect firm demand to continue at least until the end of the year.”
Price pressure and economic damage from Covid could, nevertheless, dampen the market.
The firm also published a chart by brand that show that TCL is now just behind LGE, globally, and Xiaomi is now in fifth place.
What We Think
The regional differences are quite starkly different. Clearly, we are in uncharted waters in terms of the economic impact of Covid, but there is some hope that recent news on vaccine development might prove an inflection point with a sense that there might be a turn around in 2021.
The poor result on 8K (which means just a few thousand in each market, at most), highlights that there is really no incentive to distribute 8K content, which is not a trivial proposition.
Separately DSCC put out some info from a report by DiScien of China. (BR)
