BEIJING: Apple might have the new Apple TV box, but it might want to steer clear of building that mythical Apple television. The TV-making business is rough.
Global TV shipments dropped 8% in the second quarter of 2015, versus the year-ago quarter, according to IHS Inc. That’s the largest year-over-year decline in a quarter since Q2 2009, when global demand amid the global recession, the research firm added.
IHS attributed the latest decline on slowing growth in LCD TVs, which now account for 99% of all TV shipments, but have not made up for the lost volume of CRT sets and plasma TV, “which have largely left the marketplace.”
“2014 was a robust year for growth, with total TV shipments rising 3 percent worldwide, and developed regions growing more than 6 percent,” Paul Gagnon, director of TV research for IHS, said in a statement. “This year, however, TV demand is being negatively affected by the current global economic slowdown, particularly the rise in currency prices against the U.S. dollar, which has caused retail prices to increase in emerging markets.”
IHS said the downturn was most pronounced in the emerging regions of Latin America, Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. North American demand returned to positive in Q2 2015, but Western European shipments fell unexpectedly, leading to a 3% drop in overall shipments to developed regions.
China, still viewed as an emerging market, had growth in the first half of 2015, but the rate of growth is slowing. 4K TVs were the “bright spot,” as unit shipments grew 197% in Q2 2015, reaching 6.2 million units.
Among TV brands, Samsung Electronics led with 29% share, followed by LG Electronics (14%), and Sony (7%), and two Chinese TV brands – Hisense (6%) and TCL (5%) – that also have integration deals with Roku.
