INDIA Display

According to the recent survey report of global market research firm Display Search, LG Electronics has announced that it has become the ‘world market leader’ in LED and LCD monitors in 2010-11 with an 18% market share. This accounts 2.92 million of total 16.68 million LED and LCD monitors sold across the world.

LG LED Monitor

The share of LED monitor market from just 1% in 2009 has jumped to 10% last year. At a prior stage LG understood the potential of increasing the market share of LED monitors, as a result LG was absolutely prepared for the ‘demand shift’ from LCD to LED TV monitors and accordingly strategized its quality and quantity of LED TV monitor production. LG has pumped out a mammoth figure of investment last year in growing its LED LCD monitor business. It has invested a lot in the famous ‘Show Your Sincerity’ – the marketing campaign of LG conducted in 9 countries.

While commenting on the acquiring the throne of global leader, H S Paik, President, LG Electronics Gulf FZE stated, “This is our big achievement which represents a strong endorsement of LG’s drive to increase investment in research and development over the last 12 months. The reason for our success is simple. We’ve taken lots of customers’ insights worldwide, emphasized their demands and requirements and accordingly implement the proper innovation around those needs. Our next target is to emphasize on Cinema 3D monitors. The potential is immense in this category.”

A slim LG LED Monitor

LG foresees the overall market share of LED LCD monitors is expected to grow to 30% in 2011 from 10% in 2010. The aim of LG is to lock minimum 20% of the total expected share. According to Paik, as LG has given lots of hard work in achieving the no. 1 position in the worldwide market of LED LCD monitor, the same effort brand is dedicating on the LED and LCD products made up of IPS (In-plane switching) mode, and launching and promoting its Cinema 3D TV to different nations.

LG's newly launched Cinema 3D TV

Subhro Prakash Ghosh

Though television is an essential asset for everyone, but since childhood we have defined it as an idiot box, sometimes extremely or at times sarcastically. Now probably, like earlier days, calling a TV set an idiot box is relevant for the parents when their children undergo the terrible period of school examination. But with the changing lifestyle of Indian consumers this idiot box is rapidly becoming an essential part of home décor. So, if the television categories like LED, LCD and Plasma are not adequate to be the parts of your home décor, Smart TV can be the exact solution for this.

We usually call Smart TV our 2nd generation Internet Apps Interface. Understanding a Smart TV and finding out its basic differences from the other categories of TV product is mandatory. Smart TV is sometimes referred to as Connected TV. This term (Connected TV) is used to describe the ongoing trend of integration of internet into modern television sets and set-top boxes. The fundamental feature of a Smart TV is converging the technologies of computer and television set together. This is one of the best gadgets to make yourself a viewer-cum-user by simultaneously searching and enjoying movies, photos, videos and other contents on the web, using a local TV channel or satellite channel and internet.

LG Smart TV applications

The concept of Smart TV is new in India. Not so many brands have brought their Smart TV models so far except a few. Only LG and Samsung have so far introduced their Smart TVs in India last month. However, the Bravia range of Sony is boasted with internet capabilities with integrated wi-fi. Viera Connect of Panasonic already launched in India have the internet usage facility for social networking, cloud computing and gaming. But we can’t consider the products of Sony and Panasonic complete Smart TVs as they lack the other remarkable feature of this television category.

In this blog I will highlight the features of LG Smart TV as it is unique in terms of its features and technological offerings. Smart TV is still called Netcast as in previous years; however, LG has included some extra features that the earlier versions of Netcast didn’t include. The Smart TV of LG can be termed ‘Netcast plus’ as it has the ability to download additional applications from LG app store. Specially for the Smart TV users, LG had tied-up with Zapak, Indiatimes and Hungama – the Indian content providers for fulfilling the requirement of local Indian content. As the content is the key differentiating factors of the Smart TV consumers, LG has provided an excellent mix of both global and Indian specific contents.

Various features & applications of LG Smart TV

The functionality of Smart TV is available on select LG TVs, BD Players and Home Theatre in a box system. It is also available as a separate platform known as Smart TV Upgrader (ST600). It is a small box which adds LG Smart TV functionality to any TV with HDMI input. The functionalities and applications of Smart TV are different based on the platform. The main features of LG Smart TV system are ‘premium apps’ (pre-installed applications like Facebook, Netfix, Vudu, Twitter, etc), ‘my apps’ (the applications for downloading LG TV App Store www.lgtvapp.com), ‘smart share’ (a media player that allows to play media files from a USB drive of DLNA server). The total 14 SKUs (stock keeping units) from 32 – 55” are available now whose price ranges from Rs. 43,000 – Rs. 1.7 lakhs.