3rd and 4th Place: Sony and LG respectively, LCD sales

You know the market is pretty topsy-turvy when Vizio is so dominant with LCD HDTV sales, and a company like LG is in 4th place (and very far behind indeed). Curious is the word we’d use.

Now we know the raw reasoning behind this number: Vizio is prominently featured at Wal-Marts across the country, and their prices are pretty tough to beat. Never mind their pure stats with contrast ratio, etc are inferior to Sony and LG. Marketing and decent technologies have combined with low prices to make a juggernaut the other companies cannot ignore.

Raw numbers: Vizio captured a 27.6 percent market share, shipping roughly 2.9 million units in the US last year, a huge number. Samsung was second (kind of a surprise) with a 20.6 percent market share, shipping about 2.1 million sets total. Sony was third with 10.1 percent market share while LG was fourth with 9.4 percent.