Now that CES has come and gone and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) has revealed a few (very few) details about its 2022 TV lineup, we went back to the  company’s 2021 line of Mini-LED/QD and QD only TVs that we have been tracking since their release in May of last year.  Without details from Samsung as to potential new sizes or model tiers, consumers remain locked in to last year’s models so we took a quick look at where prices are currently to see if things had changed over the last few weeks.  Of the 35 models in our list, only 8 remain at their lowest price since release, with 4 at their highest, and only one model saw a decline in price, while 17 of the 35 (48.6%) saw an increase since 12/21/21. 
The biggest increase was $1,000 (18.2%) for the 85” top-of-the-line 8K Mini-LED/QD set (900A), while the largest percentage increase was 33.3% for a 43” QD only model, which rose from $450 to $600.  In fact every 4K QD only model in Samsung’s lowest price tier for that category (60A) saw price increases, ranging from 4.5% to the aforementioned 33.3% increase.  Across all Samsung’s Mini-LED/QD and QD only TVs the average increase was 5.9%, leaving the entire line still down 18.7% from the original release prices.
Looking at the line on a price/m2 basis, the price has declined from $1.37/m2 to $1.00/m2 currently across the entire line, but each segment has seen its own changes from day one pricing on a $/m2 basis and on an absolute basis, as seen below.  We note that the 90A (Tier 3) was affected by the inclusion of a 98” model which was originally priced at $15,000 and remains at that price, which would account for the smaller rate of price decline, both on a $.m2 and an absolute basis seen in that tier.
All in, on a general basis, prices have been inching up since the low point in November for most models.  Given the tighter margins on tier 5 – 7 models, we expect them to more closely reflect the increased cost of materials and components, offset by declining panel prices.  Sets being sold today are likely to have been produced ~45 days ago, so they still reflect older inventory, so the question remains whether TV set manufacturers will bring down prices to reflect declining LCD panel prices or will they try to capture the cost difference now that 2021 unit volumes are set.  We expect the latter.

Epistar, a division of Ennostar (3714.TT), has indicated that it will be expanding its Mini-LED chip capacity again, this time in China, bringing the new capacity on-line by the end of 2Q this year.  Last year Epistar added ~20% capacity in Taiwan, which it completed during the 4th quarter, so this new capacity is incremental, bringing total capacity from 1.2m units/yr. to 1.5m units/yr., up 25%.  Revenue from the Mini-LED segment is expected to increase from ~30% to almost 40% in 2022, although the company is expecting to see a sequential decline in sales in 1Q ’22, although a y/y increase is expected.
Fittech (6706.TT), among the top LED testing companies, is also expanding capacity, with between 20% and 30% of sales currently accounting for the company’s testing and binning services, which is expected to remain at that level this year, although sales are expected to be up in 1Q on a y/y basis.  Mini-LED production continues to expand as the technology, which improves existing LCD display characteristics, allowing the older technology to better compete with OLED displays, and has migrated down to laptops and monitors, particularly with Apple’s (AAPL) adoption of the technology in the iPad Pro (April 2021) and the 14”/16” MacBook Pro (October 2021), although the Apple XDR Pro Display came close to Mini-LED backlighting in 2019. 
While Taiwan based LED producers, packagers and attesting companies expand production, they face considerable competition from Chinese producers who entered the space a bit later than those involved with Apple’s Mini-LED supply chain, but in typical Chinese fashion, have pushed aggressively to build out  the necessary infrastructure to maintain a leading position in the LED space.  Much of China’s LED capacity however is oriented toward LED lighting and Sanan (600703.CH), China’s largest LED producer has been working toward inclusion as an Apple supplier but has yet to meet Apple’s criteria, which in the case of LEDs is quality, especially the consistency of the LEDs across a wafer or production volume generally.  Some question Sanan’s patent status, leaving Apple open to potential litigation, as another hurdle Sanan must cross if it is to be added to Epistar (Ennostar) and AMS OSRAM (AMS.SW), Apple’s current Mini-LED suppliers.
See our 2021 notes on Epistar and Fittech for more information:
12-17-21 – A Bulb by Any Other Name
12-02-21 – Apple Invests in PlayNitride
10-22-21 – Mini-LEDs – More
08-09-21 - Coincidentally
08-02-21 – Apple Revving up Mini-LED Supply Chain
04-23-21 – New Technology, New Problems
04-12-21 – Apple Mini-LED Hints
​

will have to shell out more if you still want to surprise the wife with a new high-end Samsung TV.  With only two of the 35 Mini-LED/QD or QD only sets not at their lowest price (94.3%) last time we checked (11/26) Samsung has since boosted prices on many, leaving only 20 (57.1%) still at their all-time lowest price.  Samsung did not change the set prices on any of the six 8K Mini-LED TV sets, but made some serious changes in pricing on the 4K Mini-LED/QD sets, where prices increased between 7.7% and 35%, with only the 98” set remaining flat at $15,000 and a 43” Mini-LED/QD model seeing a 7.7% price drop, the only drop in the group.  The 18 QD only sets saw three price decreases (55” and smaller sets) ranging from -5.9% to -10.0%, but the rest saw price increases ranging from flat to an astounding 58.8% increase, with the average increase for QD only sets being 6.2% and the average increase across the entire Mini-LED/QD and QD only line 7.3%.
While Samsung is advertising these sets under the title of “Don’t miss Black Friday in winter pricing”, prices have increased over the last few weeks as a host of supply chain issues and COVID-19 take their toll on in-store sales.  Of the 35 Samsung TVs listed on the Best Buy (BBY) site, 23 were in stock (65.7%) and across all TV brands carried by Best Buy, 75.9% were in stock, indicating that little has changed across the TV supply chain.  While we expect few discounts between now and the end of the year, New Year sales will likely occur, at least to some degree, and with many new models from TV brands being introduced at CES in January, brands will start to focus on reducing 2021 inventory in anticipation of building 2022 model stocks, so 2021 models will likely see another round of discounts before the new models become available. 
At CES Samsung is expected to show the first iteration of its QD/OLED TV that is based on multiple OLED layers and quantum dots that convert the OLED light into RGB pixels.  While pricing will certainly be an issue given the new technology and minimal production, we expect the product to be of high quality and a step ahead of what is currently available.  While Samsung Electronics has a wide variety of TV technologies for consumers to choose from, and might be offering WOLED TVs at some point this year, the new QD/OLED product is more important to Samsung Display (pvt) who has ended most of its large panel LCD TV production and needs a product that can fill that gap over the next two years.  While SDC dominates the small panel OLED market, they have a need for a blockbuster large panel product that they can sell to parent Samsung Electronics and Sony (SNE) with enough success to justify capacity expansion.  Without that type of successful product, they will remain out of much of the TV panel market.

​Indonesia is not known as a country with a vast thirst for CE products, but with the 4th largest population globally (ranking just under #3, the US) it is certainly a big enough market and the country’s capital, Jakarta is the world’s 2nd most populous urban area.  The economy is ranked 16th in nominal GDP (just below Mexico) and 7th based on PPP GDP (below Russia).  One of the country’s largest TV brands and a producer of a number of appliance and CE products, Polytron (pvt) has entered the Mini-LED TV  space, with its first Mini-LED/QD TV offering.  This brings the number of brands offering Mini-LED TVs this year to 10, a significant increase from last year’s 1, from TCL (000100.CH), who also was the only brand with a Mini-LED TV in 2019.
As we have noted, Samsung (005930.KS) dominates the space with 16 Mini-LED models, with LG (066570.KS) second and TCL a close 3rd with 5 models and Philips (pvt) with 4.  All others have released single Mini-LED models ranging from 65” to 86”, with Skyworth (751.HK) offering two, a 75” and an 86” model.  While there is little detail on the Polytron set as yet, it is priced under $3,000, which makes it the least costly 86” Mini-LED/QD TV, however Xiaomi’s (1810.HK) 82” Mini-LED/QD set comes in at $1,549, making it the lowest in terms of cost/in2.
As Mini-LED backlight production expands in 2022, we expect most TV brands will either offer or add to their Mini-LED TV models, which in most cases will be at or near the top of their TV lines.  The missing brand this year has been Sony (SNE) who offers what they call ‘Full Array’ TVs, which could mean almost anything from more typical backlight arrays to more sophisticated modules, but with none of the Sony literature mentioning Mini-LEDs, we leave them out of our Mini-LED database, which now includes 39 models released this year.  While some have called 2021 the year of the Mini-LED TV, we expect 2022 will be the real breakout year for the technology as a broad range of Mini-LED backlight products will be offered by LED producers and packagers, along with a number of Mini-LED products that are produced in-house.  As Mini-LED products move into monitors and notebooks, championed by Apple (APL), production scale will increase and cost will be further reduced, although it seems TCL and Xiaomi have already taken the lead in offering relatively low-priced Mini-LED/QD TVs this year. 

Simply put, there were only two special deals offered by Samsung (005930.KS) for their 2021 Mini-LED/QD and QD only TVs.  Based on prices tallied on 11/9/21, again on Black Friday, and today (Cyber-Monday), prices on all the TVs in the Mini-LED/QD and QD only lines, which includes sets from 98” to 32” and between $15,000 and $400, differed only on Samsung’s 43” 4Q QD TV (60A), which dropped from $600 to $500 and the similar 32” QD only model, which dropped from $450 to $400.  Other than those two changes at the very bottom of the line, prices remained the same as they were pre-holiday, other than one model, an 85” 4K QD set that increased in price by $100.
Of the 35 TV sets in our survey, 33 are still at their lowest price point since they were introduced in late May of this year.  As the charts are almost the same as our last posting, we will show the initial price, the current value, the change, and the corresponding value/in2 of the Samsung Mini-LED/QD and QD only TV line in the table below.  We note the 98” 90A ($15,000) is essentially an ‘on order’ set and the 90A 43” ($1,300) is in short supply and is not available in all regions.  We have highlighted the best ‘value’ (cost/in2) in each category.

​Chinese brands are not known for their advertising subtlety, adding adjectives such as glorious, triumphant, and industry-leading to announcements of accomplishments or industry metrics.  With the end of the Chinese 11/11 shopping holiday now upon us, a number of Chinese brands have begun to offer up results.  In a ‘super-burning’ report, Chinese brand TCL (000100.CH) has indicated that it exceeded 2.187b yuan ($342.7m US), a 36.7% increase over 2020 sales, a new record high, although it does not qualify whether this was for an extended period or for a single day total. 
That said, TCL notes that an outstanding product this year was its Mini-LED QD TVs, for which it describes itself as the QD/Mini-LED product leader, Mini-LED backlight leader, the world’s leader in QLED technology, and the top ‘comprehend the AI chip’, which we take to mean the use of AI in Mini-LED displays.  They go further in noting that they have annual production capacity for 10m units, 470 related patents, and are the sales leader (QD/Mini-LED) in North America, Europe, and China.  They also specify that their Mini-LED backlights are not PCB based but are deposited directly on glass, a distinct cost advantage, and are actively driven, rather than the passive drivers used by some.  Not leaving out that 9 out of every 10 Mini-LED TVs that have been sold (goes back to 2018) have been TCL’s, the company rarely misses an opportunity to mention that it has been researching and producing Mini-LED TVs for considerably longer than both Samsung and LG (066570.KS), who are both new entrants to the product line and have relatively weak Mini-LED manufacturing capabilities, citing 2020 statistics, but do not cite 2021 metrics, given both TV giant’s entry into the Mini-LED/QD market earlier this year.
We certainly give TCL credit for moving ahead with Mini-LED TVs years before others were in production and also give them credit for being the price leaders, as we have noted previously, but 2018 through 2020 were the easy years, where the only competition was from other TV technologies.  While both Samsung and LG, along with Sony (SNE), are new to the market this year, we expect the competition to increase as all three build out their supply chains and ramp production.  This is the right year for TCL to celebrate its success with Mini-LED/QD TV as next year there will be new players and lots of marketing from TV brands.  Take the victory lap.

As we continue to follow Samsung’s (005930.KS) Mini-LED QD offering prices in the US into the holidays, we see two new entrants into the mix.  The first is one that has appeared and then became unavailable, a 43” version of the 90A series (Mini-LED/QD 4K), which has returned at its original price of $1,300 and a new model in the same group, a 98” Mini-LED/QD 4K set that enters at $15,000.  While the smaller set is in a normal price range, the 98” set is not and the simple calculation of cost/in2 shows that for an increase of 32.9% in surface area over the equivalent 85” set, you pay 355% more.  This comes to $1.07/in2 for the 85” set and $3.65 for the 98” set, which makes obvious the fact that prices for newly released TVs are usually their highest lifecycle point.
On a more general basis, much of the price reductions seen in our most recent check have taken place in the 4K Mini-LED/QD category and among sets that are just quantum dot enhanced, but looking at the entire list (excluding the two new entries), all but two of 33 (93.9%) are at their lowest point since initial release (5/20/21), with the average price decline 27.3%.  The models with the greatest declines fall into the 8K Mini-LED/QD 900A Series (Top of the line), where prices have fallen 34.0%, and the middle price tier of 4K Quantum Dot sets, where prices are now 31.4% lower than initial release.  When looking at all Mini-LED/QD TVs, the average price is now down31.7% and looking at all QD only TVs, the average price is down 23.6%.  The average price reduction on those sets that saw m/m reductions was -12.3% and across all sets (including those that remained flat) the price reduction was 6.3%.
As we get closer to Black Friday (11/26), we expect another round of price reductions although it seems Samsung has most recently been focusing on lower priced sets, likely to meet unit volume targets.  While we cannot check actual stock at Samsung USA, we did check to see how many models could be shipped ‘next day’, which would indicate stock at a nearby Samsung warehouse or distribution center.  Of the 33 models checked (neither of the two new models were available), 66.6% were available for next day shipping with the remaining 33% shipping within 14 days, other than two models (8K 85” Mini-LED/QD top-of-the line $5,500  and 65” 4K Mini-LED/QD $1,700) that would not ship until 12/3/21, which would indicate stock is readily available for most models.
With 18 days to the first big holiday in the US, we would expect at least one more round of price reductions past the current discounts, which Samsung calls ‘Early Black Friday Deals’, and as the holiday selling season this year covers even more ‘holiday selling days’, given the progressively earlier ‘pre-pre holiday’ discounting already seen, we expect the Samsung Mini-LED/QD and QD only TV line will continue to see price reductions through the end of the year.

​Mini-LEDs are a display improvement that will help to sustain LCD technology during the next few years as it is buffeted by competition from OLED technology.  But a number of firms have lowered their expectations for Mini-LED unit volumes this year, even as Apple (AAPL) seems to be adopting the technology more deeply.  There is a reason and it is really quite obvious in that the price of LCD panels has increased throughout most of the 2020 and 2021 years while OLED displays have not seen comparable price increases.  As Mini-LEDs are relatively new from a production standpoint, they are expensive and when coupled with increased panel price costs, have slowed their adoption among consumers.  The combined higher LCD panel cost and the high price of the Mini-LED backlight have given OLED more ground in which to compete and estimates for Mini-LED notebooks are now expected to fall below those of OLED notebooks.
But is this a sustainable issue?  Not in our view, as the price for large panel LCD displays has begun to fall and the Mini-LED supply chain is expanding rapidly.  As we have previously noted, we expect real progress from Mini-LED backlighting to begin in earnest in 2022 as competition increases and costs decrease.  Coupled with TV panel price reductions, this should make Mini-LED TVs more competitive and better able to compete with OLED TVs, although OLED TV production costs have also seen reductions as LG Display expanded capacity at its Guangzhou large panel OLED fab.  Mini-OLED usage in notebooks will be a more difficult challenge as panel prices in the IT space have not declined, but the promise of more Apple mobile devices using Mini-LEDs will expand momentum next year. 
Given that Samsung (005730.KS) is a big proponent of OLED notebooks, the battle between display technologies in that space will be a more complex one, but in the TV space we expect to see a number of new brands entering the Mini-LED TV market in 2022, especially as Chinese panel producer BOE (200725.CH) is trying to build a business as a source of Mini-LED backlight units to local panel producers  As long as we don’t see excessive large panel price increases in 2022, we expect overall Mini-LED adoption to expand and become meaningful in the premium TV category during the 2022 holiday season.

​Mini-LEDs get quite a bit of coverage, both from us and the tech press, but most investors we speak with have little understanding as what Mini-LED backlights are and how they differ from what has existed in the past, so we look at a few examples to give a better understanding of what Mini-LED units are used for and how it is changing the display business.  This is not an all-encompassing note in that we are not going to delve into the detailed mechanics of Mini-LEDs and Mini-LED backlighting, but more toward giving a more practical look at the technology.
At the onset, it is important to understand that Mini-LEDs and their applications are not new or a radically different technology from what has existed since LCD displays were commercialized.  LCD technology is based on using liquid crystal as a ‘gate’ that opens and closes, letting light through the crystal or blocking it before it reaches a color filter that breaks it down into three colors for each pixel.  In early LCD displays that light was produced using fluorescent light strips but that type of light was not well suited for effective color production.  Eventually fluorescent LCD backlights were replaced with LEDs which gave display designers a bit more color quality and required less bulky components that allowed displays to become thinner and lighter.
LCD backlights based on LEDs initially began as rows of LEDs mounted on one or two edges of the display.  These LEDs were mounted so the light would be generated horizontally, shining into the edge of an acrylic plate (light guide) whose optical characteristics spread the LED light across the entire display.  Such edge-lit backlights were always on, using the liquid crystal pixels to block or unblock the light according to the image, but while this was a step up from fluorescent backlights, due to the physical characteristics of liquid crystal, some of the LED light passed through the liquid crystal even when it was ‘closed’.  This made pixels that should have been black a bit gray and at the same time, the LED light from areas where the liquid crystal was ‘open’ leaked into pixels that were ‘closed’ causing a halo or bloom effect.

​While this sounds bad, it was the norm for LCD displays until 2013 when OLED displays were introduced.  As each pixel in an OLED display produces its own light, when an OLED pixel is off, it is black, and since there is no backlight in OLED displays, there is nothing to leak into adjacent pixels.  Such contrast made the grayish blacks in LCD displays look inferior and LCD designers went to work to find ways to combat the threat of OLED.  One new iteration was to move the LEDs from the edges to directly behind the light guide, more effectively spreading the light across the display, but given that the LEDs were still on all of the time, the other issues remained.  Designers then came up with the idea of dimming the LEDs in coordination with the image by using silicon to sample each image before it was displayed, determining the ‘best’ overall brightness level and dimming the entire LED backlight to match.

​While dimming was certainly the right track, images are complex, with very different areas that can be widely different as to lighting.  Dimming the entire LED backlight to suit an ‘average’ caused bright areas to be dimmer and dark areas to be brighter, so designers then split up the LEDs into groups, taking what might have been 32 LEDs and breaking them into ‘strings’ of 4 LEDs each.  While this meant creating separate control circuitry for each ‘string’, by placing the 8 strings in this example across the careen, the silicon could now average the correct lighting for each string ‘zone’ and further refine how much light each string produced.

​Mini-LEDs take this concept of dimming to its next level by both reducing the size of the LEDs, allowing them to be placed closer together, increasing the total number of LEDs used, and breaking the LED backlights into what are thousands of zones.  By increasing the granularity of the LED backlight’s ability to control smaller image segments, the light leakage and the halo effect are reduced, creating deeper blacks without sacrificing the brightness in other areas of the image.  Mini-LEDs will continue to evolve, moving to smaller LEDs, smaller pitch (the distance between each LED) and more zones, but there are some issues that inherent in making such improvements, with the single most important being price.
More LEDs and more control circuitry mean it takes more time to produce.  At the chip level die need to be tested both to make sure they work and to check color and brightness.  Then they are usually transferred to an intermediate medium and then placed on the final substrate.  Increasing the number of LEDs and decreasing the size adds time and therefore cost to the backlight, and as Mini-LED levels, the cost increases as typical process equipment is not designed to operate at such dimensions and speeds.  We have noted that new technologies for sort and transfer are being developed, but it will take time for costs to be reduced, leaving Mini-LED displays in the ‘premium’ category.
By scaling production and equipment to these new levels, especially taking cues from semiconductor tools that are adept at smaller device sizes, costs can be reduced and one such path is based on the Mini-LED array itself.  Most LED backlights are built on PCBs, which mounts the LEDs on a T-pack that is soldered to the PCB board or by using surface mounted LEDs, which are packages that connect the LED to the PCB.  Smaller LED backlights were relatively easy to produce this way, but as the number of LEDs increased, the control circuitry became more complex, and the size of displays continued to increase, PCBs had to also increase in size, now fitting TVs over 80”. 
This became considerably more burdensome for TV designers, and with the move to Mini-LEDs, which can bring the LED count to 20,000 or more, PCB boards began to become unwieldy, having to be mounted in frames to keep them rigid.  Mini-LEDs are now transitioning to a process called COB (Chip-on-board) where the LED itself, not a package/LED is mounted on a substrate such as glass, that already has control circuitry in place.  This technique, which uses deposition processes similar to those used to produce TFT (Thin-film transistor) backplanes for displays, allows for more densely packed Mini-LED displays, and because spot soldering is not used, the failure rate is considerably less than with SMT arrays.  Given the smaller size and large numbers of Mini-LEDs used in displays, the cost of repairing a defective Mini-LED is high, which adds value to the COB process.  As the industry develops such processes, the price of Mini-LED backlights will decrease while the characteristics continue to improve.

While the price of Mini-LED backlit LCD displays is certainly higher than typical edge-lit or full-array backlighting, even less sophisticated Mini-LED processes have a place in the display space and takin a cue from one of the early leaders in Mini-LED backlight development, Taiwan based Lextar (3724.TT), show a few examples of their Mini-LED backlight product applications in Figs. 8 -11.  We assume that chips for such arrays come from affiliate Epistar (3724.TT), while other chip suppliers have aligned with other Mini-LED packagers and array suppliers.  Such is the case with China’s BOE (200725.CH) who began production of a Mini-LED display line in March of 2020 with an emphasis on COB on glass substrates, working with chip supplier HC Semitek (300323.CH).  HC Semitek has also been supplying Mini-LED chip product to TCL (000100.CH) who has been a leader in the Mini-LED TV space and Skyworth (751.HK).  Foshan Nationstar (002449.CH), and Shenzhen LongLi Technology (300752.CH) have also supplied Mini-LED chips to TCL, and one might notice a preference to use local LED suppliers coming from Chinese Mini-LED array producers.
All in, while Mini-LED technology is an evolution of long-standing LED backlight technology, as the cost decreases and availability increases, the technology will help to prolong the life of LCD technology, giving some protection to the massive investments made in LCD capacity over the last 20 years.  While OLED is certainly a competitive display technology, the cost of producing OLED displays remains high compared to LCD, and while OLED display quality has a number of superior characteristics to LCD displays, Mini-LEDs narrow the gap, at least from a consumer perspective.  Each iteration in the saga of LED LCD backlighting has proved expensive at the onset and eventually come down to levels where it has little effect on the average price of LCD TVs. 
While Mini-LEDs do have their particular cost issues currently, the fact that existing process technology can be used to improve production costs gives us hope that Mini-LED premiums will become less onerous by the end of 2022.  Apple’s (AAPL) careful adoption of the technology in the iPad and MacBook, and potential expansion across those lines next year will certainly help to give confidence to chip producers and array developers, which will increase competition and reduce costs further.  While still in the early stages of implementation, we see much activity in the LED space toward such product development and dedicated Mini-LED capacity expansion backed by both display and LED producers who see the technology as a way to extend LCD investment lifetime without massive spending, while we expect consumers will be happy to see another level of LCD display improvement, as long as it doesn’t cost much more than they are used to paying for pre-Mini-LED technology. 

Each year the lead-in to Black Friday gets extended, with deal ads starting in October and the actual Black Friday (11/26) day itself starting for many retailers on Wednesday, November 25.  Last year many brick & mortar retailers gave workers Black Friday off and closed stores to avoid crowds during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and relied on increased on-line sales to make up the in-store selling day loss.  While we expect there might still be some store closings, on-line shopping has already become so ingrained in our culture, especially in the 25 – 34 year old bracket, that missing the overnight camp-outs in front of Wal-Mart (WMT) will likely not be missed by many.  In fact, a recent survey of 1,000 consumers who plan to shop between September and Cyber-Monday indicated that only 30% of respondents thought that stores should still remain open and have door buster sales, with 39% preferred the stores to stay open but have no door buster sales, while 31% stated that they would prefer the stores to remain closed on Black Friday. 
On a more general basis, an Offers.com (ZD) survey indicated that 20% of shoppers expected to increase spending during the holidays this year while 21% expected to reduce spending, so the overall consumer spending pattern will likely remain on track with recent years.  That said, now that the press has taken up the story on supply chain issues that might affect holiday deliveries, Black Friday early discounting serves the purpose of lengthening the time when orders might be placed, which gives retailers more wiggle room on delivery schedules, so said supply chain issues do lend some legitimacy to an extended holiday season, but at the same time consumers have also become used to those last minute ‘Super Savings Discounts’ that pop-up on peak buying days, which might not look as attractive if discounting has been in place for over a month.  That, coupled with consumer electronics’ inflationary characteristics this year could make it a bit more difficult for consumers to find the bargains they have become used to, especially if there are delays in delivery times.

While it is impossible to get an accurate picture of holiday CE deals across a large swath of products, we look back at one area where we have hard data, Samsung’s (005930.KS) Mini-LED/QD TV line, which we have been tracking since the products were announced in May.  As a reminder, this was the first year Samsung has offered a TV line that was based on Mini-LEDs, which gives us the opportunity to see how effectively Samsung priced the models at the onset, and how those prices have been trending to date, especially as we head into the holiday season.  We check Samsung’s Mini-LED/QD TV prices roughly every two weeks, although when we are contacted by Samsung as to ‘price drops on products you have viewed’, we check to see if there are any unusual pricing movements.
Based on our data, it seems that Samsung has already begun its holiday discounting program, at least for its Mini-LED/QD TV line, as the most recent tally has indicated that prices for much of the line have again reached their lowest point since release in late May.  In fact of the 33 models we track, 29 are at their lowest point since release, while 2 are at their highest (actually unchanged from the initial price) and the top of the Mini-LED/QD line (8K) is now 36.7% below the initial price, dropping over 10% over the last week, while the 4K Mini-LED/QD are down less, but also saw price drops between 2.8% and 8.2%.  Samsung’s quantum dot only sets fared a bit better, down between 0.0% (low-end QD only line) and 4.4% (hi-end QD only). 
While these prices, especially at the high-end of the line are significantly discounted from initial list price, they are also competing with Mini-LED TV price leader TCL (000100.CH), who is on their 3rd Mini-LED/QD iteration, and LG Electronics (066570.KS), who has pricing more comparable to Samsung.  TCL has far less name recognition in the US than either Samsung or LG, but has gained much recognition as a low-cost alternative to premium sets from other major TV brands at retailer Best Buy (BBY).  While feature-to-feature comparisons are difficult, TCL’s Series 6 Mini-LED/QD line directly competes with Samsung’s 4K Mini-LED/QD line and while TCL offers a limited number of comparative models, they are priced far below even Samsung’s lowest tier Mini-LED/QD sets.  TCL has already discounted their Mini-LED TV sets from list, so we would expect less discounting going forward, but with models between 46.2% and 51.9% below Samsung’s comparative pricing, the difference to consumers is obvious and continues to keep Samsung Mini-LED/QD prices under pressure.