LG Electronics Closing Down Offline Stores in China
Korean home appliance makers are leaving the Chinese market as they are losing ground to local companies, which are waging a price war based on improved technology.
LG Electronics is closing down its shops housed at offline stores of Suning.com, one of China's leading retailers, and will gradually shut down its stores at Gome, another major Chinese home appliance distributor.
Industry watchers say LG Electronics' withdrawal from offline stores in China results from the long slump of its TV business in China. LG Electronics' share of the Chinese TV market stands at 0.4 percent, less than 1 percent, in 2020, according to data from IDC, a market research firm.
LG Electronics has been desperately trying to increase sales of premium products such as OLED TVs in China but to little avail. The company’s share of China's OLED TV market was 12.0 percent in the second quarter of 2020, down from 20.3 percent a year earlier, Omdia said. Its market share was lower than that of Japan's Sony (35.7 percent), China's Skyworks (22.1 percent) and China’s HiSense (14.0 percent).
Although LG Display exclusively supplies large OLED TV panels to the world and started mass-production at an 8.5th-generation OLED fab in Guangzhou, China, it is uncertain whether it will have a positive impact on LG Electronics' status in the Chinese OLED TV market. Chinese TV companies overtook Korean and Japanese companies a few years ago with products made from low-priced LCD panels.
Samsung Electronics, which has the largest market share among non-Chinese TV producers, also recorded a market share of only 1.7 percent, far smaller than first-ranking Xiaomi’s 20.3 percent.