TCL eyes 12% market share in India with new smart TVs

China's electronics giant TCL is betting big on the Indian market. With the launch of three new smart TV series, the company is looking to have 12 per cent of the smart TV market share in India by the end of December 2022.

We currently have 6 per cent of the country's market share. Vijay Kumar Mikkilineni, Marketing Head of TCL India, told Business Today that their dream is to replace Sony, which is sitting at 12% of the market share. According to GFK, Samsung is leading the smart TV market in India, followed by LG, Sony and TCL.

TCL is not just making smart TVs in India, but has begun manufacturing display panels earlier this year. Panels, which have been majorly imported from China, contribute to about 70 per cent of the cost of smart TVs. The POTPL, TCL CSOT's largest overseas panel factory outside China, started production on February 15th this year and the first shipment was shipped to Samsung India on March 23 as per the company.

We got good support in terms of various aspects from the government of Andhra Pradesh back in 2018, and that's the reason why we invested in such a huge factory outside China. The factory is spread across 153 acres of land with an investment of Rs 1,832 crores and will generate direct and indirect employment of 8000. Mikkilineni says that our panel factory which can make panels from 5 inch to 65 inches across various technologies will have an annual production capacity of 8 million units. There are 8 million panel production capacity that TCL hopes to export panels from India in the future.

TCL has introduced Mini LED TV in India to strengthen its market share in India. The C 835 New Generation Mini LED 4 K Google TV features 144 Hz VRR, ONKYO, IMAX Enhanced, Dolby Vision IQ, Dolby Atmos, HDR 10 MEMC, HDMI 2.1. The TV comes with Google TV and will be available in 55-inch, 65-inch and 75-inch sizes for Rs 119,990, Rs 159,990 and Rs 229,990 respectively. The Mini LED TV will not be volume drives to start with, according to the company.

The second launch is of the TCL C 635 Gaming QLED 4 K TV with 120 Hz DLG Game Master, which is integrated with Wide Color Gamut, 4 K HDR, and MEMC Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation, available in 43 inch, 50 inch, 65 inch and 75 inch for Rs 44,990, Rs 54,990, Rs 64,990, Rs 85,990 and Rs 149,990 respectively.

The third range is the TCL P 735 4 K HDR Google TV, which pushes content options across streaming services and will be available in 43 inch, 50 inch, 55 inch and 65 inch at Rs 35,990, Rs 41,990, Rs 49,990 and Rs 69,990 respectively.