Icons of Trust 2012 – HD TVs

As far as HD TVs are concerned this year has been all about Smart TVs and 3D. Smart TVs are basically connected screens that are capable of pulling content from web sources. With content came some innovative features such as apps and widgets too. The other push was on 3D; not surprising when you consider all the hype since CES 2011. Almost all brands came out with 3D offerings of their own and some players like LG even innovated on the glasses, making them stylish and lighter than the typical heavy 3D glasses we are accustomed to. 3D content still remains much of a grey area still. The other push this year was on LED. Readers who have been following Digit’s coverage on the subject would already know that the term LED TV, which drove much of the marketing effort all through the year, was itself a misnomer. The so called LED TVs are technically LED backlit LCD TVs. Sure they’re thinner but no quantum jump in terms of the underlying technology.

Coming to the results of our survey, the rankings this year almost exactly mirror what we saw in our previous iteration. Sony dropped a few points on the scoring scale but still maintained to hold on to its first spot resolutely with a score of 85.83 per cent. Samsung followed close behind with 75.90 and LG, as expected, filled the third spot with a score of 61.79 per cent. In fact it is interesting to note that the overall picture hasn’t changed for the last two years of icons of trust.

Key findings:

• Sony TVs seem to be very popular constituting 42.40 per cent of ownership amongst our surveyed audience. Samsung TVs were owned by 20.80 per cent of our respondents while LG stands at 15.20 per cent.
• The perception about Sansui and Vu seems to be very poor amongst our respondents and are the only two brands to end up with a negative score. The reason primarily was low scores in the credibility, quality and loyalty scores. Vu scored low on availability as well.
• In a turn of events from last year, Sony’s overall credibility score dipped below Samsung, even if ever so slightly. Sony’s Credibility was 85.69 per cent while Samsung was 87.30 per cent. We suspect Samsung’s presence and perception in other product categories spilled over and helped its credibility score in this category.
• A new entrant in our Trust Index this year was Philips debuting with a decent score of 23.73 per cent slightly ahead of its strategic partner Videocon which scored 14.99 per cent.