Samsung retains smart TV dominance

Samsung retained its lead over the global smart TV market in the fourth quarter of 2013, accounting for 26.4% of shipments, according to new Strategy Analytics research. 

The Smart TV Market Share Report Q4 found that Samsung’s share of the market rose by 1 percentage point compared to Q4 2012, while second place LG took 14.4%, an increase of 2.5 percentage points.

Rounding out the list of top five smart TV vendors was Sony in third place with 14.3% of the market, followed by Panasonic with 7% and Sharp with 4.9% – however, all three saw their share drop year on year, by 1.4, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points respectively.

“As smart TV becomes a more standard feature in TVs, dictated both by the vendors’ desire to raise average selling prices and consumers’ desire to future-proof their big ticket purchases, smart TV market shares will begin to more closely resemble that of the overall flat panel TV market. We see this fluctuation sorting itself out among the Japanese vendors which came to the segment early and fast-growing Chinese vendors like TCL,” said David Watkins, director of connected home devices at Strategy Analytics.

In terms of overall flat panel TV share, Sasmung led in Q4 with 21.1% of the market, followed by LG with 13%, TCL with 7%, Sony at 6.2% and Hisense with 5%.