While Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are leading in premium TV market, smaller businesses are receiving attention for their strategies to look for opportunities that will benefit them.

It was effective for them to use a strategy that removes unnecessary things such as 3D video and Smart TV functions so that they can lower price. A trend that favors large-screened TV is helping growth of the market.

According to industry, Alphascan Display and TG & Co are distinguishing themselves in TVs by basing their recognized technologies on monitor display products. They lowered price as much as they can by removing 3D and Smart TV functions and even eliminating ground-wave tuner.

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<TG & Co’s 70-inch Big Display >

“Smart TV consumers are not familiar with large manufacturers’ distinct operation system (OS). As members of paid-broadcasting channels such as IPTV, digital cable channels, and etc. close in 90% of all household, consumers are more familiar with Android and HTML5-based Smart OSs that are installed in set-up boxes.” said a person associated with TG & Co.

Smaller businesses focused on picture quality such as 178° optical point of view panels that are used in large businesses’ products and FHD (1920x1080) and 4K UHD (3840x2160) resolutions. They receive panels from Samsung Display, Sharp, and others.

Alphascan Display released 49-inch 4K products and is planning to release 55-inch 4K models soon, and TG & Co showed ‘Big Display’ 65-inch 4K products last year. Alphascan is supporting 4K•60Hz corresponding HDMI to connect to outside equipment while removing 4K tuner. TG & Co is focusing on large-screen market by releasing 80-inch products followed up by 70-inch FHD products this year.

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<Alphascan Display’s UHD TV ‘A4900UHDTV >

They also added additional functions. TG & Co Big Display added illumination sensors to entire screen so that it can control backlight’s brightness on its own by sensing brightness in each part. It added this function to help its consumers who have trouble sleeping after watching TVs at a high level of brightness. According to investigation done by Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI), ratio that uses media before falling asleep in all ages was the highest. It also provides a function that allows consumers to listen to sound with screens turned off.

Smaller businesses’ strategies to go after niche markets have the same way of doing something in preference for large-screen to consumers’ choices to decrease burdens from price. According to market investigative company called IHS, rates of 46 to 49 inch, 50 inch, and sizes bigger than 60-inch were proportional to sizes as they were 6%, 18%, and 62% respectively while rate in increase of shipment of different sizes of TV channels was only 1% for 40 to 43 inches. Size is increasing as a key size in 2TV market changed from 32-inch to 40 to 43-inch.

Staff Reporter Seo, Hyeongseok | hsseo@etnews.com