Samsung Retained Dominant Global Smart TV Share Q3, Says Strategy Analytics

Global shipments of connected TV devices, which include smart TVs, videogame consoles, smart Blu-ray players and digital media streamers, jumped 18 percent in Q3 to 52.7 million units from 44.5 million in Q3 2014, Strategy Analytics said in a Tuesday report. Shipments of smart TVs, which have the largest share (47 percent) of installed connected TV devices, grew 26 percent in the quarter to 30.1 million units, making up 52 percent of all flat-panel TVs shipped globally, the research firm said. Many TV makers are “doubling down” on smart functionality and “making it a standard feature of their mid to high-end sets,” it said. Consumers “increasingly expect their next TV purchase” to be a smart TV, while retailers now see smart TVs as “a checkbox feature,” it said. Though big makers like Samsung have publicly vowed that all the TVs they sell by 2017 will have smart functionality, “some of the biggest growth in the market” is being driven by second- and third-tier brands, it said. Samsung remained brand-share leader in Q3 smart TV shipments with 25 percent, and one in every four smart TVs in use around the world is a Samsung model, it said. LG had 15 percent share of the Q3 smart TV, for second place, it said.