The content exists or can be “digitally upgraded”, the displays are ready, but are consumers ready to fork out for a 4K upgrade yet?

Even if LCD or OLED TVs grow larger, flatter and thinner, my impression is that cloud-based services and video compression will eventually kill wall-mounted TVs as a concept.

In fact, the move to 4K could be seen as a desperate attempt by the TV industry to reverse the global market trend: two consecutive years of decline since the 2011 peak of 255 million units shipped worldwide.

“4K is a very important strategy for most brands, but particularly those targeting the high-end TV market,” observed Paul Gagnon, director of global TV research for NPD DisplaySearch.

But overall TV shipments fell 3 percent in 2013 (7% in 2012) and even newer LCD TVs declined 1 percent as early as 2012 (CRT and plasma TVs being the hardest hit technologies). But NPD DisplaySearch expects the number of UHD TVs to reach 62 million in 2017.

The research firm sees OLED and 4K TVs as growth drivers, it expects curved TVs display shipments to reach nearly 800,000 units in 2014 and to exceed six million units by the end of 2017, boosted by OLED TVs.

But the novelty of OLED and curved TVs will wear off too and even the higher selling prices and higher profit margins of such TVs will certainly fail to compensate for the overall market shrink.

What probably makes it harder to attract television buyers, especially in saturated markets such as Europe and the USA, is that consumers spend more time on their smartphones and other internet-connected devices, with online content and games at their fingertip wherever they are.

Splashing tens of thousands of dollars only to be stuck in a room watching the same mediocre content (with a better resolution I admit) that you could access from any mobile device does not make much sense