Samsung Electronics has been the world’s largest TV seller in 2015 on the back of the strong performance of SUHD TVs, its high-end models that was released last year. According to global market research firm HIS, Samsung held the top spot in the global TV market last year, taking 27.5 percent in annual sales and 21 percent in shipments.

In addition, the company was a leader in the segment in terms of sales and shipments, for 10 years in a row. Samsung Electronics has sold about 427 million TVs in global markets for the past decade since 2006.

Samsung had a 34.1 percent share in the UHD TV market in terms of sales last year, maintaining the mid-30 percent level for a second successive year from 35.3 percent in 2014. Accordingly, Samsung is leading the premium TV market on the back of SUHD TV models with quantum dot displays.

This year, it is planning to strengthen its premium TV market share with the 2016 Quantum Dot Display SUHD TV lineup.

TV Shipments Decline

The abrupt weakening of global demand for TV sets, combined with continued LCD capacity expansion, caused an oversupply in the market in the second half of 2015. This shift to oversupply has resulted in extremely steep LCD TV panel price declines, but it has been difficult to pass the savings along to consumers, as inflation and currency depreciation in emerging markets have offset the cost reduction. As a result, total annual TV shipments fell to 226 million units in 2015, a 4 percent year-over-year decline, according to IHS.

Plasma and CRT shipments have fallen to negligible levels, and while organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV is still in the early stages of growth, shipments of LCD TVs, the dominant display technology, fell less than 1 percent in 2015 to 224 million units, compared to a 7 percent increase in 2014.

While overall TV shipments fell last year, year-over-year 4K TV shipment growth was impressive. Unit shipments rose 173 percent to 32 million units, aided by year-over-year average selling-price-per-inch erosion of nearly 30 percent. The pace of TV screen size growth slowed in 2015, and the average size of TV displays grew just 2 percent to 39.3 inches, which is about half the rate of growth in 2014. However the 4K TV mix at even mid-range screen sizes (between 40 inches and 50 inches) has been better than expected. 4K TV accounted for 50 percent of shipments of 55-inch-and-larger TVs in 2015, and 30 percent of 48-inch to 50-inch TVs.

In the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2015, global TV shipments declined 2 percent year over year, as North American TV shipments grew 2 percent. While overall TV shipments in emerging markets declined 6 percent year over year in Q4, TV shipments in China surged 12 percent. Latin America TV shipments were down just 6 percent, thanks to a subsidy program in Mexico; however, TV shipments in Brazil declined 18 percent.