Will the king lose his crown soon? A reshuffle is coming to the TV market

TCL is hot on the heels of Samsung in LCD TV market share. The advantage of the Korean corporation is already minimal, which shows that the competition in each TV segment is extremely fierce.

This is interesting looking back, because in the past Japanese brands dominated among TV sets – Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer and Toshiba. Later, LG and Samsung dominated, and now it looks like the Chinese are getting ready to take over as sales leaders.

According to the analytical company Counterpoint, at the end of 2025, TCL holds 16% of the shares, which is only 1% less than Samsung. During this time, TCL grew from 13% to 16%, while Samsung dropped from 18% to 17%.

Interestingly, TCL cannot conquer its own market, but it is doing great globally – sales increased by 20% year-on-year.

It is worth emphasizing, however, that we are talking about the number of units sold. Samsung still clearly dominates in revenues because it sells much more premium TVs.

TCL, in turn, strengthened its position in the miniLED segment, which gave LCDs a big leap in quality. It is here that TCL leapfrogged Samsung and Sony technologically, which resulted in better sales.

In recent years, TCL has greatly improved miniLED – thinner backlight, lower energy consumption and more dimming zones. This direction is to be continued also in 2026.

Will Samsung then lose its leadership position? Counterpoint believes that Samsung will retain first place, although the race will be very close. At the same time, Chinese brands – TCL, Hisense and Xiaomi – are growing the fastest in the miniLED and large diagonal segments.