The television market is more contested than ever and traditional brands they no longer monopolize sales like they used to. As happens in other areas such as the automotive or smartphones, Chinese manufacturers They have stopped competing only on price and now they also do it in benefits.
Hisense reached the second place worldwide in the premium segment with a share of 24% in the third quarter of 2024. TCL, for his partsurpassed Samsung in the television segment of 80 inches or more during that same period: it maintained a share of 23% compared to Samsung’s 19%.
Both Chinese brands arrived at CES 2026 presenting their own technologies based on the evolution of its MiniLED panels:Hisense with your RGB MiniLED evo capable of exceeding 110% of the BT.2020 standard, and TCL with its SQD MiniLED as an alternative to OLED. The war is no longer about inches or prices. Now the dispute it’s in the quality.
In this context of reconfiguration in the mid- and high-end market, we have had the opportunity to speak with Charlie Baeresponsible for Samsung’s television division in Europe.
From volume to value: Samsung’s new scenario
When asked about Samsung’s two decades of leadership in the global TV market, Bae doesn’t resort to triumphalism. Aware of the change that is occurring in the market, his reading is more nuanced, almost concerned about what is coming. “The market is transforming: it is going from being driven by volume to being driven by value,” he explains.
“Due to the current economic situation, people are more conscious of what they spend. During COVID they spent a lot on changing their televisions, but now, when they consider renewing their TV, they are more cautious and think about the practical side.”
That consumer caution is, in Bae’s opinion, both a challenge and an opportunity. A buyer who thinks twice is not necessarily a lost buyer; He is a buyer who can be convinced with solid arguments. And Samsung wants to be the brand that gives it to them.
One of Bae’s most compelling arguments in his defense against Chinese rivals is not technological, but mathematical. According to the Samsung manager, a cheap television lasts on average between three and five years. A Samsung television, he tells us, lasts more than seven or eight years on average. “Think about it like this: if your TV lasts three or four years, you can only watch one World Cup. With Samsung, you can watch two.”
Added to this is the commitment of seven years of system updates operational. “Even if you bought your TV last year, you’ll still be able to use the new AI features we launch. We want people to buy with the peace of mind that their TV is a long-term investment,” says Bae.
Samsung’s response to competitive pressure with Chinese brands has a key piece: artificial intelligence. “15 years ago we introduced the Smart TV and no one imagined that it would become the standard. Today no one conceives of a television without applications, without being able to watch what they want when they want. That change led us to AI. Without a doubt the era of ‘AI TV’ will continue to develop over the next five years,” he concludes.
However, Bae is careful to separate the hype widespread surrounding this technology of the actual content. “Previously, AI focused on optimizing the image and sound quality of the television,” he admits. “But now it’s visible and you can ask the TV questions about recommendations, travel plans, anything. The TV is something you can talk to, not just something you watch.”
According to the manager, what differentiates Samsung products is that they apply this technology in a way that is useful to users, using as an example the Football Mode with AI included in their televisions, which allows something hitherto unthinkable: silencing the noise of the stands in a football match, without turning off the sound of the commentators. “If you’re watching the game at night and don’t want to turn up the volume, you can simply mute the stands and still hear the commentary clearly,” explains Bae.
Beyond AI: OLED, MiniLED and MicroRGB
In addition to the revolution in sales, television display technologies have stepped on the accelerator with the democratization of MiniLED panels for mid-range televisions, the gloss enhancement and color volume What QD-OLEDs offer or the new generation of MicroRGB screens.
In this sense, Bae rejects the idea of a screen technology that monopolizes the entire television market. “Technology continues to evolve, and I do not think that a single one is going to dominate the market. We do not focus on a single technology; we work on all of them in parallel, because each one responds to different user needs,” says Samsung’s product director.
Samsung, its manager assures, works on all fronts: from the transparent Micro LED exhibited at CES to the 130 inch Micro RGBpassing through the high-brightness OLED. But also in formats that no one expected.
In fact, Bae not only assures that Samsung will continue developing its catalog to offer different screen technologies, it is also committed to the flexibility of screen sizes and formats. All this in a context of televisions with increasingly larger diagonals, and living rooms with increasingly less square meters.
“There are consumers who prefer small screens. We have The Movingstylea 27-inch touch screen that you can move around the house. In Europe, the number of single-person households is growing and homes are getting smaller, so you may be interested in a small, portable screen, not one with many inches,” insists the executive.
In addition to the new panel technologies that are arriving in the brands’ catalogues, Samsung also highlights the arrival of other innovations that contribute to improving the visual experience, such as Glare Free technology, the anti-reflective system developed by Samsung that eliminates reflections and glare from windows and lights on the television screen.
“Spain is a country with a lot of sun, so if you are in the living room watching television, the reflection from a window can be very annoying. In addition, this year the World Cup is played at night due to the time difference with the US, so at night there are also many lights and reflections on the screen, so this technology also solves that problem.” In 2026, Samsung has integrated this Glare Free technology throughout its QD-OLED range of the S90, S95 and S99.
On the other hand, the South Korean brand assures that it will maintain its commitment to 8K resolutions in his flagship.
According to Bae, “some users say there is not enough 8K content. It is a common mistake. The advantage is that with a television with 8K resolution you can continue watching 4K content and thanks to AI scaling, you can still enjoy image quality almost equivalent to native 8K. Thinking ahead, if you have a 4K TV and the content is 8K, you will only see it in 4K. If you have an 8K TV, you’ll be prepared. History repeats itself. “It already happened with HD, with Full HD, with 4K, and it will happen with 8K.”
The ecosystem as a retaining wall
It is not the first time that we see that Chinese brands reach a product niche by altering the status quo and even putting viability in check of the manufacturers that previously led those niches. We saw it with the arrival of Xiaomi, Huawei, Vivo, Oppo and many other phone manufacturers.
The pattern has been replicated, with surgical precision, with manufacturers of electric carswhere new brands have put consumers in serious trouble giants like VolkswagenStellantis or Ford.
Faced with this scenario, the Samsung spokesperson’s response leaves no room for doubt: “Our strength is in the ecosystem. We have mobile phones, appliances… a complete ecosystem that works through SmartThings, and the important thing is that SmartThings also works with products that are not from Samsung“.
The proposal is to turn the television into the command center of the smart home. If someone rings the doorbell, the image appears on the TV screen. If the washing machine finishes, the notification arrives. “We try to make the TV the control center of your smart home,” summarizes Bae.
Samsung’s challenge for the coming years, ultimately, is not only technological, but involves convincing consumers that behind a higher price there is something that Chinese brands do not yet have: decades of built ecosystem, certified security, and the promise that the television you buy today will still be relevant in 2032. The question that the entire market is asking is whether that will be enough to contain to manufacturers with skyrocketing sales figures such as Hisense and TCL.
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Image | Samsung
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