The goal is to be number one in shipment and sales in the global premium TV market for televisions priced over $1500.
On the 11th, LG Electronics emphasized this during a new product briefing for the 2025 LG OLED (organic light-emitting diode) and QNED TV at LG Science Park in Gangseo-gu, Seoul. To achieve this goal, LG Electronics announced it will pursue a 'dual track' strategy that promotes not only its 'trademark' OLED TVs but also the premium liquid crystal display (LCD) QNED TVs.
Until now, LG Electronics has focused its marketing on OLED TVs in the premium TV market, but as Chinese brands rapidly dominated the market by emphasizing large and premium LCD TVs, the company revised its strategy. According to market research firm Omdia, LG Electronics held a 24.8% market share based on sales in the television market priced over $1500 last year, ranking second after Samsung Electronics (50.7%).
This year, LG Electronics has divided its OLED TVs into the high-end 'OLED Evo' and standard OLED models, offering the industry's widest lineup ranging from 42 inches to 97 inches. At the same time, it has newly added a 100-inch QNED TV product, showcasing a wide range of premium LCD TVs from 40 inches to 100 inches.
Baek Seon-pil, executive director of LG Electronics' TV product planning, emphasized the technology that acts as the 'brain' of the TV as a differentiator from Chinese TV brands. Baek noted, 'While Chinese companies have gained hegemony in the panel field, their hardware technology has followed significantly, but because they lack an independent operating system (OS), there remains a gap in areas such as TV control and providing region-specific services.'
LG Electronics particularly identified its proprietary AI chip (SoC, system on chip) as a core competitiveness. Baek stated, 'We believe that having an independent SoC technology is incredibly important in the AI era and are not skimping on investments.' High-performance SoCs are essential to implement AI upscaling features that improve video quality and audio simultaneously.
The new OLED Evo features LG Electronics' latest AI chip 'Alpha 11,' while the QNED Evo includes 'Alpha 8.' The Alpha 11 processor subdivides the TV screen at the pixel level, increasing brightness by about three times compared to previous OLED TVs and expanding the color reproduction range to achieve more detailed picture quality.
Based on this AI chip, the AI features applied to LG TVs broadly consist of five functions. By using an AI chatbot linked to large language models (LLM), customers can easily resolve TV issues without contacting customer service. For example, if someone says, 'The TV screen is too dark,' the AI detects the problem and adjusts the screen brightness accordingly.
Additionally, an AI feature that automatically finds and adjusts the desired picture and sound quality has been implemented. If users set customized picture quality per account, the AI can recognize the user by voice and change the display. There's also a service that recommends necessary features before the user asks, and a function that searches and provides information about drama plots and other queries. Baek mentioned, 'The TVs for domestic sales are equipped with ChatGPT, and a new feature utilizing Google's generative AI Gemini is expected to be added in the second half of this year.'
As part of its strategy to expand market share in the premium TV segment, LG Electronics plans to increase the proportion of online sales. Baek stated, 'As the trend of purchasing high-priced products online is spreading, in Korea and Brazil, 20-30% of all TVs are sold online,' and added, 'Last year, despite market adversities like the war in Ukraine, the amount of OLED TVs sold online increased. Therefore, this year, we will target the online market based on a pricing policy that consumers can accept.'