Your weekend plans may include watching some television — but where was your television set made? Chances are good the answer is someplace in Asia, but increasingly the details are changing.
For many years, South Korean companies have dominated sales of television sets around the world.
Market research out this week shows that Samsung and LG still top the list for brand names of televisions.
But Chinese companies are picking up their share of the global market.
According to research company IHS Markit, more than half a billion television sets were sold around the world just in the first quarter of this year.
About a third of them were manufactured by Chinese companies while about 32 percent were made by South Korean companies.
The names of the Chinese companies may be less familiar — the top two brands are TCL and Hisense.
Six years ago, TCL didn’t even sell televisions in North America.
But that’s not the only part of the world television business that’s changing. Companies and products are increasingly spilling across borders.
One textbook example of the shifting globalization is Samsung’s subsidiary Samsung India.
That company now assembles its televisions destined for the India market in Vietnam.
But according to the Economic Times of India, the company is now in talks with Foxconn to do some assembly in India for the Indian subsidiary of the South Korean company.
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company that does much of its other manufacturing in mainland China.
