In a piece of bad news for TV manufacturing giants Samsung, LG and Sony, the worldwide market for televisions has so far shrank year-on-year for three consecutive quarters, according to new figures.
The IHS-iSuppli figures show that during the first three quarters of 2013, 158 million television sets were shipped worldwide, down 4.4% from 163.2 million units for the same three quarters last year.
The figures project full year shipments of 226.8 million units, down 4.8% from 238.3 million in 2012 and significantly down from 255.4 million units shipped in 2011.
To put those figures into perspective, it is projected there will also be 227.3 million tablets shipped worldwide during 2013, 134.4 million desktop PCs and 180.9 million portable PCs.
In contrast to those annual figures, there were around 261.1 million units smartphones shipped during the third quarter of 2013, or an annualised rate of well over 1 billion units.
The figures show Samsung leading the worldwide television market with shipments of around 11 million units per quarter and a marketshare of 21%.
The second largest competitor is LG, with 7.9 million units per quarter and16% marketshare.
“Despite the sombre results this year, a gradual rise is expected beginning in 2014, which will then continue until at least the end of the forecast window in 2018. Even so, it won’t be until 2017 when the market regains its former size attained in 2011,” IHS-iSuppli TV systems analyst Jusy Hong says.
Sony is the third largest competitor in the market, followed by Chinese vendors TCL and Hisense.
China accounts for around 24% of the worldwide television market or around 11.6 million units per quarter, compared to 8 million units or 16% for North America, while Latin America now accounts for 14% of the global market and the Middle East and Africa for 8%.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
