Irvine’s Vizio Inc., which designs and markets flat TVs here, grew its market share in the first quarter, extending its lead as the biggest seller of liquid-crystal display sets in North America.
The company sold 1.5 million TVs in the quarter for a North American market share of 21.4%, according to DisplaySearch, a unit of Port Washington, N.Y.-based market researcher NPD Group Inc.
That’s up 46% from a year earlier as Vizio had four of the top five selling LCD models in the U.S., according to Portland, Ore.-based Quixel Research LLC.
Vizio took share from big-name competitors, including Samsung Group, Sony Corp. and Funai Electric Corp., which sells sets under the Philips brand in the U.S.
No. 2 Samsung sold 1.2 million sets and had 16.6% share. No. 3 Funai sold 884,000 TVs and had 12.1% share. No. 4 LG Electronics Inc. sold 783,000 sets for 10.7% share.
In 2010, Vizio sold 6.9 million TVs for 18% of the market, according to DisplaySearch.
Vizio also topped Samsung in the light emitting diode, or LED sets, selling nearly 733,000 TVs for a North American market share of 29%.
Samsung sold 582,000 LED TVs for a market share of 23%.
Vizio started in 2002 amid the flat-screen boom and now has yearly sales of about $3 billion.
It does all of its product design, engineering, marketing and customer service locally. Most everything else is done in Asia.
Vizio sells its TVs at Costco, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and other big retailers.
