South Korea’s two multinational electronics giants, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, together commanded about a half of the entire global TV market last year, leading the pack with their popular premium TV series.

According to global technology industry tracker Omdia, Samsung Electronics topped the world TV market in 2021 with a 29.5-percent share in shipment value and 19.8-percent in shipment volume. This was the Korean tech company’s 16th year to take the lead in the global TV market, it said on Sunday, attributing the success to brisk sales of its high-end TV products QLED TV models.

Samsung held a 42.1-percent share in the global market for premium TVs priced $2,500 or higher and 44.9 percent in the ultra-large TV segment in value.

Samsung’s QLED TV achieved cumulative sales of 26 million units in five years since its release in 2017. According to Omdia’s data, Samsung sold 9.43 million units of the QLED TV in 2021, steadily up from 800,000 units in 2017, 2.60 million in 2018, 5.32 million in 2019 and 7.79 million in 2020. The QLED TV controlled 44.5 percent in the global market for premium TVs of $2,500 or higher last year. It has held more than a 40-percent share since 2019.

Its archrival LG Electronics last year accounted for its largest ever share of 18.5 percent in the global TV market in terms of shipment value, following Samsung Electronics after doubling shipments of its premium OLED TV models. Despite the downturn in the global TV market, its OLED TV shipments exceeded 4 million units last year after delivering 1.41 million units in the fourth quarter only.

The combined share of Korea’s two TV giants reached nearly half of the entire global TV market last year, leaving its foreign rivals trailing far behind them. Japan’s Sony accounted for 9.5 percent while China’s TCL and Hisense took up a single-digit share, each.

By Oh Chan-jong and Jenny Lee

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