SEOUL, KOREA- A new era of UHD TV is coming close at hand worldwide. According to market research firm DisplaySearch, the world’s UHD TV market will likely to shoot up to 9.87 million units in 2016, a ten-fold jump from this year’s 930,000.The expansion of the UHD TV market is felt first in China, the largest TV market in the world. It is forecast that about 70 percent of the world’s UHD TV sales this year, or 635,000 units, will be sold in China.

The commercialization of UHD TVs is also progressing at a rapid pace here in Korea. The Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said in its Next-generation Broadcasting Technology Roadmap, released in June, that cable broadcasting will start sending UHD TV signals from 2014 and satellite broadcasting from 2015.

Japan’s electronics companies, which have experienced tough times due to challenges from their Korean rivals, are also going all-out to take a leadership role in UHD TVs. The Japanese government budgeted 3.1 billion yen (US$31.5 million) to support the development of next-generation broadcasting technologies.