- TCL reportedly overtakes LG in sales in the premium TV market
- TCL’s share of the market sits at 19%, putting it in second place
- The trend for big-screen TVs is classing with OLED’s inflexible pricing
TCL has surpassed LG in sales in the premium TV market, taking second place overall behind Samsung.
TCL’s sales, manufacturer of some of the best mini-LED TVs, accounted for 20% of all premium TV sales in 2024, with LG accounting for 19%, according to Counterpoint Research (via FlatpanelsHD).
The data, provided by Counterpoint Research, shows a huge swing in market share of premium TV sales between 2023 and 2024, with TCL’s share increasing from 12% to 20% and LG’s falling from 26% to 19%.
What Counterpoint classes as a ‘premium’ TV includes a variety of different TV tech and panel types, but both mini-LED and OLED are included. One staggering statistic suggests that mini-LED sales have grown by 170% year-on-year – and while LG does make a selection of mini-LED TVs in its QNED range, they’re not as strong as models from TCL, Samsung and Hisense. LG’s premium power so far has all been in OLED.
So, what caused such a huge shift in sales? Why are people steering away from the best OLED TVs and instead opt for mini-LED sets instead? As always with TV, it comes down to bang for your buck and highlights one of OLED’s continuing issue; it’s inability to budge on price.
It’s all about the money
Since mini-LED TVs arrival in 2021 (yes, they really are that new), more and more models are appearing that deliver superb picture quality, stacks of gaming features that put them up there with the best gaming TVs and even built-in sound that can rival one of the best soundbars. One of our favorite TVs of 2024, the Hisense U8N, scored four-and-a-half stars out of five in our review and other mini-LED sets such as the Samsung QN90D, TCL QM851G and TCL C855 in the US and UK respectively earned the same rating.
Mini-LED is featured among a lot of our best-of lists, competing and sometimes knocking off OLED TVs that would have had that spot a number of years ago. While OLED in many people’s eyes still reigns supreme, mini-LED takes the crown in a crucial area: price.
When you can get a very good mid-range 75-inch mini-LED TV, such as the Hisense U7N, for under $1,000 (in fact, it costs roughly $899) the same as you’d pay for a 48-inch mid-range OLED, for many budding TV buyers, they’ll be more inclined to opt for the larger screen, especially if it can deliver great performance.
With more mini-LED TVs arriving each year, generally with improved picture quality each time, pricing is getting aggressive in the mini-LED market, with brands such as Hisense and TCL competing with the likes of Samsung to win over consumers.
So, if mini-LED TV manufacturers are aggressive on price, why doesn’t OLED compete? Realistically, it can’t and based on what we’ve been told by manufacturers, it won’t anytime soon. Manufacturing OLED panels is an expensive, complex process with a high risk of waste, and unless that process improves, OLED prices will remain unchanged.
Inkjet printed OLED is the big hope on the horizon for the tech, but we’ve been told that even that will be limited to smaller screens for the time being – perhaps it may come to TVs in five years or so, but right now it similar yield problems to standard OLED.
If you want to buy a 77-inch OLED, the cheapest you’re looking at is $1,599 for the entry-level LG B4, stepping up to $2,199 for the mid-range LG C4. In mini-LED, you can get the 75-inch Hisense U8N, a flagship model, for $1,299 and the equally impressive and also flagship TCL QM851G for $1,479. To get a flagship OLED, such as the LG G4 or Samsung S95D for that kind of price, you’ll have to settle for 55 inches.
It’s numbers like these that point to why people in the market for a premium TV are more likely to choose a mini-LED over OLED, and signals why brands such as TCL and Hisense are taking higher percentages of the market share away from big brands like LG and Samsung. The trend is towards buying larger TVs, but people aren’t getting richer, so they’re looking to balance size and price – and bang-for-buck TV makers are the beneficiary.
That’s not to say people aren’t buying big-screen OLED TVs, as there are 77 and 83-inch models released each year, and we know they’re popular with enthusiasts. But, for people who are having to watch their budgets, the choice of a 55-inch OLED or a 75 – even 85-inch! – mini-LED TV seems to be leaning more in favor of the latter.
Until improvements to the OLED manufacturing process become widespread, OLED prices are unlikely to fall – and these changes are not on the horizon in the near term. While I’m not expecting OLED prices to drop to mini-LED prices, I hope there’s something that OLED makers can do, or the stats will keep moving in this direction.
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james.davidson@futurenet.com (James Davidson)
