By Kate Yuan

Chinese TV makers are catching up with global giants in market shares of TV market shipments amid sluggish demand, according to a BusinessKorea report on September 16.

The combined global market share of China’s TCL, Hisense and Xiaomi increased from 25.3% to 27% in the first half of this year, while the top two Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics continued to decline. TCL's market share is 11.1%, closer to the 13.7% of LG.

The global TV market shipments fell by 6.6% year on year to 92.604 million units in the first half of this year. The market sales fell 12.5% to $47.5 billion during the same period.

The report said that Chinese companies’ LCD TV products are technically on a par with South Korean manufacturers. In this case, the latter are developing OLED TV products and related technologies.

Currently, LG Display and Samsung Display are the only two companies in the world capable of producing OLED TV panels.

Chinese companies are also increasing the production of OLED panels for their mobile phones, but they are still incapable of producing OLED TV panels usable without problems, the report said.