Samsung, LG step up competition for smart TV content

The world’s two largest TV makers Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. are scrambling to boost their smart TV content to make up for stagnant TV shipments with commercials and relevant software sales.

Samsung TV Plus, launched in 2015, is a streaming app available on Samsung smart TVs, as well as on Galaxy tablets and Galaxy smartphones. It offers about 2,000 live TV channels from 24 countries for free, alongside on-demand movies and shows.

From next month, it will add the American talk show “Conan,” hosted by the namesake American talk show legend Conan O’Brien to the list of its smart TV programs, Samsung said last Friday.

O'Brien has won two Emmy Awards for outstanding achievement in the field of interactive media.

In return for the all-free streaming services, commercials are shown intermittently.

LG is also keen to beef up content for LG Channels, a free streaming service for its smart TV platform WebOS.

LG Channels offers a wide array of live and on-demand programs, including the MasterClass streaming service, which features more than 180 instructors and classes.

From last month, MasterClass has offered access to a cooking class from British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and a music class from Mariah Carey.

LG Channels also launched streaming services for American football and basketball matches of the National Collegiate Athletic Association last month.

The intensifying competition between Samsung and LG in the TV content segment followed the decrease in global TV shipments in both 2021 and 2022 amid fears of an economic downturn.

There are few signs of a rebound in TV demand, however.

TrendForce, a research firm, forecast TV shipments worldwide to decline by 1.4% to 199 million units in 2023, compared to last year.

The seven-year replacement cycle of TVs on average is putting pressure on both Samsung and LG to find a new revenue source to compensate for stagnant TV sales.

Their diversifying efforts seem to be paying off. In 2022, Samsung TV Plus subscribers spent a combined 3 billion hours watching its content, more than twice as much time as they spent on the smart TV platform the previous year.

LG Channels' subscribers more than doubled to 48 million by early this year, compared to 20 million in the same period the last year.

In 2022, Samsung led the TV market, taking a 29.7% share of global sales, trailed by LG with 16.7%, according to Omdia, a data company.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article