What Display Daily thinks: OLED prices are going to tumble by the end of 2024, and it is going to favor Chinese vendors. Samsung looks good because Samsung has done an extraordinary job of taking up the higher reaches of consumer electronics, replacing Sony, and leaving LG in its wake. At least, to some extent.
In the meantime, TCL and Hisense have leveraged their local markets to bolster their respective bona fides in advanced TVs. That actually means that when the time comes, and it will come soon, the time when OLED advanced TVs price down with MiniLED TVs, TCL and Hisense are going to give Samsung a run for its money, and there’s not much room for maneuver for the Korean company in terms of price or market share.
Where China goes, so does Southeast Asia, Africa, Middle East, and then southern Europe. The sanctions on China, and a weak export market, has helped local companies to bolster their brands and that’s why I am less than assured by any notion that Korea can keep a lead purely based on OLED or avoid a repeat of what happened with LCD panels.
Andy Grove of Intel used to say, only the paranoid survive. Intel kept making its chips faster and kept prices up and kept pursuing next gen fabs to stay ahead of the competition. The thing about trying to be a front-runner all of the time is that it is exhausting. Not a bad tactic for a race here or there, but not a long-term strategy. Trying to outrun the competition with OLED is getting to be exhausting. Intel finally got outrun by a GPU company, Nvidia, and didn’t even see it coming behind because it was so hell bent on staying ahead of the pack that it just wore itself out.
TCL and Hisense Take a Bow
If you try and distill consumer sentiment about OLED versus MiniLED TVs, you get a general consensus, based on all the reviews and tech talk on blogs, that MiniLEDs are brighter and have a wider viewing angle and no burn-in, while OLEDs are preferred by some people because of the perfect blacks, the contrast, and thinner designs, even if they are more expensive.
So, it comes down to taste? Maybe. Or, maybe it’s just a case of a MiniLED TV looks pretty good in a fluorescent showroom with bright lights and comes at a better price for the size of screen. You don’t get perfect blacks and contrast, but you get a bright screen and more than 70 inches of display for about 25% less in price.
Who knows. We don’t really have great data on the terminal sales of displays. Just numbers, and most of the display industry is concerned about capex and where to lay down huge bets that won’t pay off for at least five years. Nevertheless, the new data from DSCC’s advanced TV report suggests that OLED kind of works for Samsung, even though it doesn’t really grow its market, while MiniLED TVs are giving TCL and Hisense a strong hand to play, one that they can parlay into much bigger bets on OLED when the time is right. It also helps that Samsung seems to have lost the thread on MiniLED TVs and looks like it has given up the ghost.
Just look at the data:
- MiniLED TV Shipments and Market Share:
- MiniLED TV shipments increased by 26% YoY.
- MiniLED TV revenues increased by 14% YoY.
- Samsung’s MiniLED unit share declined to 39%.
- Hisense’s MiniLED shipments increased by 18x, capturing 27% of the market share.
- TCL’s MiniLED shipments increased by 112%, with a market share increase to 26%.
- Hisense Performance:
- Hisense shipments increased by 159% YoY.
- Hisense revenues increased by 130% YoY.
- Hisense’s unit and revenue share grew to 14% and 11%, respectively.
- TCL Performance:
- TCL shipments increased by 34% YoY.
- TCL’s unit share increased from 8% to 11% YoY.
- TCL’s revenue increased by 32% Y/Y, with its revenue share growing from 7% to 10% YoY.
- TCL’s MiniLED business units and revenue increased by 112% and 135% YoY, respectively, with its share in MiniLED increasing to 27% for units and 28% for revenue.
If you compared the performance of MiniLEDs against OLED in the advanced TV market, the numbers don’t lie. OLED isn’t delivering value. That’s not a great thing for it during a period of consumer worry and economic concern. Maybe there’s a turnaround when demand picks up, but it is unlikely that Samsung or LG are going to want to drop prices or sacrifice margins on OLED. When people get used to a certain type of product or price, they rarely want to change to something kind of the same but more expensive.
| DSCC Advanced TV Report | Q3’23 Results | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| OLED TV Shipments | 1.4M (down 19% YoY) | Decrease in shipments, except for 77” and larger sizes. |
| Advanced LCD TV Shipments | 3.7M (up 9% YoY) | Increase in shipments, especially in small and large sizes but decrease in 55”/65”. |
| Advanced TV Revenues | $6.1B (down 5% YoY) | Overall decrease in revenues, reflecting market trends. |
| OLED TV Revenues | $2.2B (down 16% YoY) | Decrease in revenues, indicating a shift in market preference. |
| Advanced LCD TV Revenues | $3.9B (up 3% YoY) | Increase in revenues, suggesting a growing market segment. |
