A New Trend in TV Market
The market for mid-sized 40-inch OLED TVs is growing fast, fueled by an increase in the number of gamers and a spike in demand for second TVs due to COVID-19.
Sales of TVs in the 40-inch range are on the uptick. Thus far, screen sizes have kept becoming bigger ang bigger as people across the globe are interested in viewing movies and sports on large screen TVs. Yet, an opposite trend is taking place.
Sales of OLED TVs in the 40-inch range amounted to 949,000 units in 2021, according to Omdia, a global market research firm. The figure stood at 167,000 units in 2020, the first year when 40-inch TVs first came out, but their market size has more than tripled in a year. Omdia predicts that sales of 40-inch TVs will reach 1,152,000 units this year.
Industry insiders cite the increase in the number of gamers as the main reason for the expansion of this segment. High definition and fast response speed are required when playing games. OLED TVs fulfill this need. But their screen sizes were generally too large to put them on desks. As gamers look at screens from a short distance, they required medium-sized premium TVs.
The global game population stood at about 3 billion in 2021, says a report released by the Korea Creative Content Agency in February. It accounted for 38 percent of the world’s population (7.84 billion people).
Another reason is that demand for second TVs for private spaces such as studies swelled as indoor time had increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
LG Electronics, which accounts for more than 60 percent of the global OLED TV market, moved quickly. The company will release a smaller 42-inch OLED TV model in 2022 after releasing a premium OLED TV model in the 40-inch range in 2020 ahead of others by launching a 48-inch OLED TV model in that year. It is the smallest OLED TV model in the world. Pre-orders of the model are currently underway in the UK.
Following LG Electronics, Sony, Philips, Panasonic and Hisense also launched 48-inch OLED TV models one after another. As global TV companies release OLED TVs in the 40-inch range in a row, LG Display’s sales of OLED TV panels in the 40-inch range are also on a sharp rise. The Korean display giant exclusively supplies OLED TV panels. From 210,000 units in 2020 to 1.4 million units in 48 inches and 600,000 units in 42 inches in 2022,
Omdia forecast that LG Display’s total sales of OLED TV panels in the 40-inch range will increase by about 10 times in two years as sales of 48-inch OLED panels and 42-inch OLED panels will increase about ten-fold to a total of two million units in 2022 from 210,000 units in 2020. It also predicted that they will ascend to 2.6 million units in 2023 and 2.9 million units in 2025.