The Black Friday retail extravaganza will herald a new era of TV technology in SA, and this year many retailers are extending specials throughout November.
The charge is being led by Korean manufacturer LG, long a pioneer in TV display technology.
“If you look at consumer behaviour patterns over the years, November has always been a popular time for people to invest in home entertainment and more specifically TVs,” says Lance Berger, head of sales at LG SA. “It offers consumers the opportunity to purchase products at never-before-seen pricing.”
LG’s Black Friday campaign will be spearheaded by a 55-inch TV set using cutting-edge OLED [organic light emitting diode] display, which usually retails at more than R20,000. This week, the OLED55A1 will sell for R16,999, making it the first sub-R20,000 large-screen TV set in SA using OLED.
“What really sets OLED TVs apart,” says Berger, is that conventional LED displays rely on backlighting to produce an image, resulting in duller blacks. OLED instead uses over 33-million self-lit pixels that can turn on and off on an individual level. This enables it to create perfect blacks and infinite contrast.”
Not everyone agrees that OLED defines the cutting edge.
Samsung is a member of a three-company consortium, along with Chinese manufacturers TCL and Hisense, that is pushing the QLED standard, an evolution of LED and LCD (liquid crystal display) technology that has dominated flat-screen TV for the past decade-and-a-half. QLED adds a layer of “quantum dots” to LCD, to enhance brightness.
In April 2021, Samsung launched a variation called Neo QLED, and it will use the coming week’s Black Friday promotions to make it more accessible to South Africans.
“Black Friday has become an integral part of Samsung’s annual marketing plan,” says Mike van Lier, director of consumer electronics at Samsung SA. “With high consumer demand for the product range, it’s an opportunity to make the products accessible to even more people. We use platforms such as Black Friday to give consumers access to larger screen sizes and, potentially, new technologies.”
Samsung’s 55-inch Neo QLED units using the 4K display standard — essentially four times the definition of high-definition displays — retail from about R25,000, with some retailers dipping below the R20,000 mark. The Neo QLED units go up to 8K resolution, double that of 4K, with four times the pixels. The price is also typically double.
We use platforms such as Black Friday to give consumers access to larger screen sizes and, potentially, new technologies
— Mike van Lier, director of consumer electronics at Samsung SA
“When it comes to generating high-quality viewing experiences on a TV, a balanced array of technologies and features is necessary to determine the picture quality of a display,” says Van Lier.
Samsung’s biggest partner in the QLED Consortium, TCL, is one of the world’s biggest TV manufacturers, with a focus on more affordable devices. Coincidentally, it entered SA this month, launching its brand directly into the Black November frenzy.
Ryan Curling, marketing manager for TCL SA, says it is “one of the most important months for any tech brand in the South African market”.
The most significant aspect of TCL’s arrival in SA is its local manufacture, which is expected to keep prices low. “Our plan is to offer both entry-level and higher-end models to the local market and Sadc [Southern African Development Community] regions and grow our retail offering substantially in the first quarter of 2022. For now we offer both entry-level HD (high-definition ready) and FHD (full HD) models and also our higher-end Google TV offerings, in the C725 QLED TV and P725 4K Google TV,” Curling says.
The latter, a 50-inch unit, costs less than R9,000, making it one of the most affordable 4K TVs on the local market.
The third member of the QLED Consortium, Hisense, has been manufacturing TVs in SA for some years. This year it launched a range of 8K units, selling them alongside its own proprietary LED standard called ULED, which offers similar benefits to QLED, as it also uses quantum dot technology.
Patrick Hu, marketing director for Hisense in SA, says Black Friday will be an opportunity to find bargains on both its cutting edge TVs and on basic TVs. “Black Friday has been more and more important for us and also our consumers because in this festive season Hisense provides better deals so that consumers can purchase our new middle-high-end products with even less money than usual. If they are looking for an ordinary TV, they can also have a really good bargain.
“We are trying to create awareness to more consumers of our high-end products and [for them] to understand what benefits they will bring to them.”
Then there is the brand that differentiates itself on its operating system rather than TV technology: Skyworth, one of the biggest TV manufacturers in China, was the first to launch Android TVs in SA three years ago, and still leads the local market in TVs using Google’s operating system. It was originally known in SA as the white-label manufacturer of low-cost brand Sinotec.
It has now launched the first Android 11 TVs, which introduce Google Assistant voice control, Google Duo 2-way chat, and a wider range of Play Store apps.
Says Jaco Joubert, brand manager of Skyworth in SA: “Black Friday/November is without doubt the biggest and most important TV sales period in SA.Months prior to November we negotiate quantities and pricing with our various retailers to offer them the best deals possible to sell to their consumers.”
