In the first quarter of this year, Chinese TV makers sharply increased shipments in the global market, quickly narrowing the market share gap with No. 1 Samsung Electronics.
According to market research firm Counterpoint Research on the 29th, Samsung Electronics' first-quarter (January–March) TV shipments rose 8% from a year earlier. As a result, its share climbed 0.7 percentage points to 16.8% from 16.1% in the first quarter of last year, keeping the top spot.
However, the chase by No. 2 TCL grew even fiercer. TCL's shipments in the same period surged 22%, and its market share jumped 2.1 percentage points to 14.1% from 12.0%. The gap with Samsung Electronics shrank by 1.4 percentage points in a year, from 4.1 percentage points in the first quarter of last year to 2.7 percentage points in the first quarter of this year.
TCL's growth was based on broad shipment expansion across all TV categories, with mini LED LCD TVs in particular leading overall growth. Samsung Electronics also posted strong growth in the white OLED (W-OLED) institutional sector, but OLED TVs have a much smaller absolute shipment scale than LCD TVs, making it insufficient to change the overall trend.
Competition is expected to intensify further in the second half. Counterpoint Research projected that, starting in the second quarter, major players including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, TCL and Hisense will accelerate new product launches, further ramping up competitive intensity in the market.
Moves foreshadowing a shift in the industry landscape are also being detected. TCL finalized the establishment of a joint venture (JV) with Japan's Sony in March, and the possibility of a JV between the LG Electronics TV business unit and Hisense is surfacing.
Lee Jae-ho, a researcher at Counterpoint Research, said, "If Hisense leverages the LG Electronics TV business unit's technical know-how, No. 4 market share, and existing sales network, it could naturally take the title of No. 1 in global shipments," and added, "By prioritizing a collaborative approach through a JV, they could craft a strategy that reduces risk."