Unlike smartphones when it comes to TVs, bigger is always better. After fIling for 8K QLED and Micro QLED trademarks with the Korean Intellectual Property Office recently, Samsung has now filed trademark applications with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) for the names ‘Super Size TV’ and ‘Giant TV’ on 17 and 19 January respectively. You can view the trademark applications here and here.
Is Samsung betting on large screen TVs?
Earlier this month at CES 2018 Samsung unveiled ‘The Wall’, it’s first 146-inch modular MicroLED TV. Combined with the filing of the ‘Super Size TV’ and ‘Giant TV’ trademarks, it hints at a possibility of Samsung using large screen TVs as a strategy to improve and cement its position in the high-end TV market.
While Samsung enjoys a dominant position in the smartphone market, the situation is a bit different when it comes to TVs. LG and Sony are still dominant players in the TV market and offer OLED TVs which can compete with Samsung’s high-end TV offerings. So far, Samsung has not changed its decision to shun OLED TVs to compete with its rivals. Instead, Samsung has been pushing their QLED TVs as an alternative and is now placing its bets on MicroLED.
With Samsung focusing on MicroLED TVs and possibly working on Micro QLED and super-sized TVs, the high-end TV market will witness fierce competition in the coming years. Samsung is already expected to lead premium TV shipments in 2018 as its focus on big premium TVs over the past couple of years is going to end up paying dividends.
Update – Three more trademark applications from Samsung have surfaced in the Korean Intellectual Property Office database. These new trademark applications for the names Big, Samsung X-Large, and Super Big were filed on January 16, 2018. It appears that Samsung is trying to trademark all common terms which can be used to refer to super-sized TVs. This gives further credence to the speculation about Samsung bringing more super-sized TVs into the market. It is worth noting that some of these names are too generic to be trademarked by any company. So, many of these applications will likely be rejected. You can view these trademark applications here, here, and here.
