Another quarter, another victory for the Irvine TV company Vizio Inc., which continued to sell more TVs than everybody else. Or was it?
Two market research firms just announced the top companies for second quarter 2009 LCD TV sales. Vizio is number one in one report, and number two in another report.
iSuppli has Vizio less than a half percent ahead of Samsung. But DisplaySearch has Samsung ahead.
DisplaySearch says Vizio fell to second place when judged on units. However, DisplaySearch added that Vizio continues to see “strong growth” thanks to relationships with retailers like Walmart.
iSuppli, meanwhile, noted that Vizio didn’t grow as much as second-place rival Samsung. Still, Vizio was ahead of Samsung in market share by 0.4 percentage points, or 21.7 percent vs. 21.3 percent, as shown in the chart on the right.
Samsung’s appeal? Back-lit TVs, also called LED TVs, allowing for a brighter picture. Vizio’s first LED TVs are on the verge of hitting stores later this month.
“Samsung in the second quarter was very aggressive in introducing and marketing its LED-backlit LCD-TVs, allowing it to boost sales of these sets,” Riddhi Patel, iSuppli principal analyst, television systems, said in a statement.
Vizio spokesman Jim Noyd cleared up the confusion: DisplaySearch is tracking numbers for North America. iSuppli is tracking numbers for just the United States.
Vizio, Noyd added, doesn’t sell TVs in Canada.
Ahh.
Numbers from DisplaySearch for Second quarter 2009 TV sales in North America (all technologies are included):
| Brand | Total |
|---|---|
| SAMSUNG | 19.1% |
| VIZIO | 14.7% |
| FUNAI | 11.8% |
| SONY | 8.8% |
| LGE | 6.8% |
| Source: | DisplaySearch |
Vizio also offered some insight into its own sales: Sales of its full HD 1080p TVs grew 300 percent from last year, while HDTVs of 55-inch and higher grew 101 percent.
Vizio, which has a small operation in an Irvine office park, delayed the release of its first Internet-friendly TVs until November. The wireless TVs, which also include an Ethernet port, won’t offer full-Internet browsing. Rather, the VIA TVs (short for Vizio Internet Apps) will offer onscreen features, such as news feeds, Facebook access and other Yahoo Widgets. More on this later.
Earlier on Vizio:
