SOMETHING NEW: Are consumers choosing quality over size? And is the era of everlarger TVs over?
Two slides shared with us by Paul Gray of IHS Markit combined to provide the interesting insight that sparked the TV comparison on these pages. The first is the colourful chart (le) that also appears in News with reference to a likely coming increase in TV retail prices. But there’s more.
“The other interesting bit for me is the premium TV market”, Mr Gray explained to us at the recent Global Press conference in advance of IFA 2017 in Berlin. “What you see is that OLED prices in the premium part of the market are the same as a premium LCD TV about 10 inches bigger.”
And which do people choose? The second chart shows that this depends where you are. In Japan and North America, the big screen wins — twice as many people chose a bigger LCD screen over the smaller OLED at the same price. But in Europe, it’s dierent.
“So something really interesting is happening in the way consumers see these things in Europe, then,” says Gray. “For a premium set, all boxes checked on featuring, 65-inch OLED and 75-inch LED are the same price. And it’s becoming quite a compelling option for a lot of consumers that they’ll go for OLED rather than the bigger LCD, and especially at the 65-inch part of the market. The 65-inch OLED actually outships 75-inch LCD, and the prices are the same. It’s a really interesting dierence — consumers are actually saying no, I don’t want a TV the size of a door, I’ll actually have something slightly dierent.
The explanation might be that consumers are recognising the quality of OLED televisions, and are prepared to pay the extras, forgoing sheer size in favour of quality. But that may not be it entirely.
“My hypothesis is that we’ve reached the point where consumers say well, with the best will in the world I just can’t get a 75-inch in the house,” says Gray. The decision is made to stay with 65-inch, but then pay the premium for OLED. There’s more of Gray’s comments about screen sizes topping out on p15.
Given that up to now the TV industry has been driven by ever bigger TVs, things may be about to change, with sheer image quality and other features driving the premium end of the market. And where it does come down to a quality decision, OLED is well primed to prevail.