Emerging brands eye bigger growth in Smart TV market in India

New Delhi, Nov 15 (IANS) As festive season shopping break all records in India, not just the established players but new and emerging brands in the Smart TV category have seen an impressive growth in the country, some of them even clocking 60 per cent growth in revenues.

The smart TV market in India recorded an extraordinary 65 per cent (on-year) growth in the second quarter this year. The smart TV market continued to grab share from the non-smart TV market, taking an 80 per cent share of the overall TV market during the quarter, according to Counterpoint Research.

Due to the increasing smart TV demand, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are rapidly increasing smart TVs in their portfolios.

According to Avneet Singh Marwah, CEO, SPPL, an exclusive brand licensee of Blaupunkt TV and Westinghouse TV in India, they had a strong start in this festive season.

"Overall, we saw a 60 per cent growth in sales. After the second wave, many consumers decided to save their disposable income due to a fear of third-wave hitting, which caused a major drop in sales. But the scenario has changed with festive sales and we saw a huge spike in the recent sales held by Flipkart," Marwah told IANS.

Anand Dubey, Founder and CEO, Indkal Technologies said the response has been wonderful in the festive season and Acer has become one of the most trusted brands in India and globally.

The Acer brand has been licensed to Bengaluru-based Indkal Technologies from Acer Incorporated, which made its debut in the Smart TV segment in September.

"We have seen that same customer sentiment for smart televisions. Of course, this is just the start and we are working towards strengthening that trust by providing excellent customer service with the top-notch products," Dubey told IANS.

"Moving forward, we will look to introduce products with newer technologies like Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision running on Android 11 right out of the box. We are also developing more products with a dedicated sound bar too which was a super hit in the 43-inch UHD segment that we introduced in October," he elaborated.

In the third quarter (Q3), the Smart TV segment saw 58 per cent growth (on-year) in the country and new brands are growing faster than the market growth rate, according to Counterpoint Research Director Tarun Pathak.

"Some of our models like 32-inch Smart TV and 43-inch 4K went out of stock in a couple of hours for Blaupunkt. In Metro cities, we have seen 120 per cent growth in 65-inch and 55-inch 4K models. Westinghouse as a brand, although launched in this festive season, has seen fairly decent traction on Amazon," Marwah informed.

Blaupunkt is planning to launch gaming TVs with a better refresh rate next year.

"Next year is very exciting as we will be launching 18 new TVs across brands," Marwah said.

Dubey said that with the Acer brand, "we are targeting to ensure that every segment of television customer has an option from our lineup which is close to their individual need".

Acer brand line-up comes in eight different sizes and three resolutions across three series (P, XL and Boundless) of products.

"The Frameless models in sizes 43, 50, 55 inches have been launched as the flagship range, called the Boundless series, which come with 4K Ultra High-Definition resolutions with an almost edge-to-edge display and a 1.07 billion colours range with WCG+ technology," Dubey informed.

All Acer televisions are currently running on Android 9, but "we expect to update the software directly to Android 11 very soon through an OTA (over the air)", he said.