Samsung is now warning the industry that it expects to sell significantly less TVs in the coming months. As to be expected, Samsung is blaming the predicted loss of sales on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
When it comes to TV brands, there’s little arguing with Samsung’s dominant position. In terms of global sales, the company has been the number one TV brand for the past fourteen years in a row. While that’s impressive enough, it is Samsung's quarter after quarter top rank that has made all those years at the top possible. Therefore, when the company warns that it expects a decrease in quarterly sales, the market should too.
Samsung announced its first quarter 2020 results today, and as to be expected, was impacted by the effects of the crisis. However, the company suggested that it is going to get much worse before it gets better. As part of the press release, Samsung provided its guidance for the current (second) quarter, stating that it expects TV sales (and profits) during the three-month period to “decline significantly.” What’s more, it is not just TVs, that the company expects to see hit, but smartphones as well.
Again, with Samsung being such a dominant player in the TV market, if it is expecting a decline, then the market as a whole is also likely to follow a similar pattern, or at least, the majority of it. To put its position into perspective, you only need to look at the exact same quarter - that Samsung is now forecasting for - from last year. During the second quarter of 2019, Yonhap reported that Samsung’s global TV market share accounted for 31.5 percent of the overall market. Furthermore, that Q2 quarterly market share was the highest the company had experienced in the previous six years, suggesting the company was not experiencing a slowdown, in spite of 2019 being the fourteenth year that Samsung has sold and shipped the most TVs. If anything, it was only increasing its sales, with Q2 last year being one of the high points for Samsung TVs.
Of course, this is probably to be expected. Even though the TV has suddenly become a necessity with so many living under a stay-at-home order, why would the TV market necessarily be any different to any of the industries that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic? However, it does highlight the contradiction the TV industry is now facing. At a time when the number one TV brand in the world braces the market for a significant decline, the video services so often accessed on those devices, are seeing record increases in usage. From Samsung’s own perspective, the decline is not as bad news as it might sound. The company sees its best profits from its memory business and Samsung expects that side “to remain robust” during the coming months, conversely, thanks to coronavirus.
Source: Samsung
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3bRlLM2
0 Comments