While the global TV market effectively stood still in the second quarter this year, shipments of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TVs rose 20%. In liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs, the shipment share gap between Samsung Electronics and China's TCL narrowed to 0.1 percentage point (P).
According to market research firm Counterpoint Research on the 18th, global TV shipments in June fell 4% from a year earlier. Total shipments in the second quarter slipped 0.4% year over year, showing a flat trend.
Counterpoint Research analyzed that June's shipment decline was driven more by demand being pulled forward by World Cup promotions than by a contraction in underlying demand. Some TV demand was brought forward to April, leading to a relative decrease in June shipments, it said.
By brand during this period, shipments increased for Philips, Samsung Electronics and TCL. Hisense, Huawei and Changhong declined. Philips was analyzed to have increased shipments by launching new OLED TVs such as the OLED811 and OLED761, as well as the mid-priced quantum dot (QD) LCD TV PQS9001 across major screen sizes.
In June LCD TV shipments, TCL held a 13.8% share and Samsung Electronics 13.7%, a gap of just 0.1 percentage point. The two companies are expanding product lines featuring mini light-emitting diode (MiniLED) and red, green and blue (RGB) LED backlights, widening competition from entry-level to ultra-premium markets. While Samsung Electronics is extending RGB backlight TVs from flagships to entry-level models, TCL is focusing RGB MiniLED on large premium products and pushing a lineup of super quantum dot (SQD; Super Quantum Dot) MiniLED models that are not RGB as its mainstay.
Unlike the overall TV market, OLED TVs continued to grow. June global OLED TV shipments rose 12% from a year earlier, and increased 20% in the second quarter. LG Electronics held more than half of OLED TV shipments in both June and the second quarter, maintaining the No. 1 position.
Panel prices are cited as an additional growth variable for the OLED TV market. LG Display is developing technologies to lower the cost of white OLED (WOLED) panels for TVs. It released the "WOLED SE," which reduces costs by removing the polarizer, and is also developing a "2-stack tandem" structure that simplifies the stacked emissive layers while maintaining image quality.
Bob O'Brien, research director at Counterpoint Research, said, "Over the past few years, OLED TVs have ceded ground in the ultra-premium market to relatively cheaper MiniLED TVs," adding, "Consumers compared large-screen MiniLED TVs with relatively smaller OLED TVs at similar price points, and many chose MiniLED." He continued, "LG Display is countering this trend by introducing lower-priced OLED TV panels, and there is ample potential to win back some of those customers."