WASHINGTON: Global LCD TV shipments for 2015 will total 216 million sets, according to the latest estimation by WitsView. Shipments in 2015 will represent a slight annual decline, for the first time since the shipment slide in 2013. In the short term, consumer spending will generally remain weak due to the sluggish pace of the global economic recovery and currency fluctuations.
In 2016 the year will unlikely deliver pleasant surprises as well because these macroeconomic factors will continue to affect the market. WitsView projects that global LCD TV shipments for 2016 will arrive at around 220 million sets, up 1.85% year on year.
WitsView Research Manager Ricky Lin said that branded TV vendors have seen shifts in their market shares as the global market demand for LCD TVs approaches saturation. Samsung and LG have maintained their respective number one and two spots in the worldwide market share ranking in 2015 and their dominance is expected to continue through 2016.
In China’s LCD TV market, the market shares of major domestic brands have been lost to rising domestic Internet brands such as LeTV and Xiaomi, which benefited from the country’s booming e-commerce segment. Among the six well-known China brands, the gap between 2015’s leading three vendors – TCL, Hisense and Skyworth – and the bottom three – Changhong, Konka and Haier – will keep widening as their home market becomes even more competitive in 2016. Sony is currently the only Japan brand that is listed in the top 10 TV vendors worldwide. Other Japan brands such as Sharp have seen ongoing deterioration of their positions and will likely be lost in the competition in 2016.
The firm added TV vendors have been eagerly developing roadmaps for products with large screen sizes as to improve their revenues and margins. Consequently, TV sets with screens sized 50-inch and above now account for 19.7% of the total shipments, up from 18.3% a year ago.
The shipment share of this segment may arrive at 22% in 2016, with 65-inch units being vendors’ major focus. Also, the representation of high-resolution TVs will increase in the entry-level, 60Hz segment. As 4K TVs become more economical for consumers, their market penetration is expected rise to about 23%, compared with 2015’s projected rate of 13-14%.
Additionally, the rivalry between OLED panels and curved-screen LCD panels will continue to dominate the development of high-end market in 2016. According to WitsView, around four million curved-screen LCD TVs will be shipped globally in 2015 owing to aggressive promotion by Samsung and several China vendors. In 2016, the annual shipments of curved-screen LCD TVs worldwide may hit eight million and the market penetration is estimated at 3.6%, compared with 2015’s projected rate of 1.9%.
OLED, on the other hand, is still a costly technology because OLED panel production in general has yet to achieve a satisfactory yield rate. Consequently, LG’s OLED TV sets are high-priced despite the fact that the vendor is the leading proponent of this technology.
Nonetheless, OLED has become a much-discussed innovation that has captured consumers’ interest. Based on WitsView’s estimation, LG will ship 450,000-500,000 OLED TVs in 2015, with the market penetration at about 0.2%. However, LG will ship one million in 2016 with the market penetration almost at 0.5% on account of LG Display expanding its OLED panel capacity.
