Hisense Group shipped more than 24.5 million TV sets in 2022, according to research company Omdia, vaulting the Qingdao, China-headquartered electronics maker to No. 2 in global smart TV volume rankings, ahead of TCL and LG, but trailing Samsung.
(Hisense hyped this turn of events in a press release last week that we only stumbled onto Tuesday.)
Hisense's rapid volume gains come as the company has also announced a push for its own Linux-based TV operating system software, VIDAA, which currently only powers a small fraction of the world's smart TV's.
In January at CES, Hisense's Atlanta-based VIDAA USA unit announced that it was "taking aim at the U.S. market," which is largely controlled, TVOS-wise, by Roku.
Then, in early February, it said it was "taking aim at Roku" with a new FAST component for VIDAA.
Hisense's portfolio includes TV's powered by Roku OS, as well as Google TV/Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Comcast/Charter's Xumo TV (formerly XClass TV).
It would certainly shake up the global horse race for TVOS supremacy if Hisense were to continue growing its global smart TV marketshare while sustaining focus on VIDAA.
For promotional heft, we suggest Hisense and VIDAA enlist the exquisite spokesmanship of none other than Jesse "The Body" Ventura (circa 1984), who was pretty, pretty good at calling out "champions" like Roku back in his day.
