In recent years, under the impact of new media, traditional TV has been constantly declining, and has entered a dilemma turning point. Especially last year, the whole black TV industry gradually showed a downturn, the development of the TV industry is in a anxious atmosphere, the market is gradually occupied by the computer and other beige home appliances industry. In this case, SONY TV is doing well in China’s black TV market.

SONY TV came to the rescue

Carefully speaking, the emergence of television has been about 90 years of history, in this long development process, television has experienced black and white TELEVISION, color television, cable television, digital television and other stages. However, with the spread of mobile networks, the TV industry is beginning to suffer. Since 2015, the negative wind has been blowing in the market. According to yikang monitoring data, Q3 2017, China’s color TV output in the market is 11.38 million, a year-on-year decline of 13.5%; Sales were 36.6 billion yuan, down 7.3 percent year on year.

Nowadays, the TV industry has gradually approached the ceiling in the market, and the TV market is in a state of oversupply, accumulating a lot of goods. With the TV industry in such a slump, SONY TV had a decent year in 2017.

Speaking of SONY TV believe everyone is not unfamiliar, SONY (SONY) and Samsung (Samsung), Sharp (SHARP) known as 3S, is one of the traditional TV brands. In 2016, SONY’s home entertainment business, which includes audio business and TV business, generated total sales of 1,039 billion yen (60.2 billion yuan) and revenue of 58.5 billion yen (3.4 billion yuan), up 15.7% year on year, according to the company’s financial report. The TV business has achieved three consecutive years of profitability.

In the last three quarters of 2017, SONY TV topped the OLED TV market with a 34 percent market share in China thanks to its A1 series, according to market research firm Econ. SONY TV ranks first in the 65-inch or larger category and in products priced at 10,000 yuan or more. The announcement of the latest figures from SONY TV means that the television industry could yet compete with the beige industry in terms of growth at a time when the industry is not booming.

SONY TV’s ability to keep growing and turning a profit despite the downturn in the TV market has something to do with how it positions its products. At CES 2018 in Las Vegas, SONY, Samsung, Sharp and other big names in the TV industry unveiled 8K resolution TVS. SONY’s 85-inch HDR 8K TV is a high-end consumer product.

In order to better expand the Chinese market, SONY TV greatly caters to the consumer demand of Chinese users in the creation of new products, and makes products according to local conditions. Last year, SONY moved its head of product design to its SSV factory in Shanghai for field trips to come up with products more suited to The entertainment needs of Chinese consumers. In addition, According to China’s national conditions, SONY has reached cooperation agreements with a number of Chinese Internet companies to promote the implementation of AI technology content and interaction in China.

According to the forecast of EcON, from 2017 to 2020, the sales volume of SONY OLED, which focuses on the high-end market in China’s TV industry, will be 180,000 units, 550,000 units, 1.5 million units and 2.5 million units respectively. In order to strengthen the layout of the high-end market, SONY TV on THE OLED+ LCD layout of a higher level of consumption, for the growth of SONY TV income to improve the security. SONY TV overtook Skyworth and LG in OLED sales during the May Day holiday last year, proving the company’s ability to achieve bumper sales and revenue in a turbulent time for the TV industry, data showed.

In the final stretch of 2017, SONY TV made a remarkable comeback. But that doesn’t mean SONY TV can rest easy.

Mobile intelligent acceleration, SONY TV’s future is uncertain

Nowadays, mobile Internet is popular. With the rapid development of science and technology, the main tool for people to watch videos has been changed from TV to computer and mobile phone. Especially nowadays, the popularity of network drama also makes people consume TV less and less frequently.

In the first half of last year, the sales scale of domestic color TV sets was 21.81 million, down 7.3% year on year, according to the 2017 China Color TV Market semi-annual summary report released by Oviyun.com. The TV market shows a decline in product output. And be in this stage, be in the market all along “marginalization” SONY TV shows the posture that break out of encirclement, obtained pretty good result. But behind its recovery and development, it still faces threats from all sides.

For one thing, television is just one of SONY’s many brands, including Columbia Pictures, Xperia, Walkman and playstation. It’s not core. In many business, SONY for the television business is not always keep a high input, due to dispersion of center of gravity of the SONY TV industry can’t timely feedback to adjust, the prospect of change in the identity of the “hunters” and behind the “pioneer” constantly meet the market development, this leads to SONY’s lack of dominance in the television market. SONY also separated its TV business, making it self-financing and easily marginalizing its brand.

Secondly, the product price is too high, middle and low end users can not accept such a price. In the eyes of some consumers, black home appliances such as televisions, which cost seven to eight thousand or even ten thousand, are not as practical as beige home appliances such as computers, and are relatively cheap. For example, the recently launched SONY A1, which costs 31,999 yuan, has already sold to a large number of consumers. In addition, The Chinese market is one of the main battlegrounds for SONY TV, and The Chinese TV with absolute price advantage, SONY TV.

In addition, the price of LCD panels, which make up 40 percent of the total factory price of a TV, rose 5 percent in the third quarter of 2016, which has a significant impact on TV costs. In addition to the panel, LED lights and the impact of market demand, color TV market into a comprehensive “price surge”, which limited the TV industry to a certain extent the expansion of the terminal market scale.

Finally, due to high cost and low business income, the operation of enterprises is more difficult to a certain extent. Today, the entire TV market has gradually become saturated. In order to gain more market share, the major brands have launched a price war, which leads to the continuous increase in cost, brand profits are also decreasing, and the low income of enterprises will increase the difficulty in the operation of TV enterprises.

Overall, although SONY TV is currently breaking records in sales and turnover, there are still many problems to be solved.

Is ARTIFICIAL Intelligence SONY’s next lifeline?

“TVS tend to be the biggest screen in the home, in the most visible place,” NPD industry analyst and vice president Stephen Baker said in a statement. “Consumers have historically preferred brands that people recognize. Consumers show their TV to others, they want it to look great, they want it to be worth the investment. Great design, great technology, great graphics, that’s what they’re after…” This sentence fully expresses people’s demand for TELEVISION, and also points out the way for the development of television industry.

Actually, since cream-colored home appliance appears, already brought some potential crisis to TV this kind of black home appliance, and after its beginning popularization, the impact to TV industry is bigger. In a depressed TV market environment, SONY TV needs to do something to change the status quo of the industry and improve its competitiveness in the industry.

On the one hand, SONY TV is too expensive to expand the size of the consumer market. Today, the middle – and low-end consumer groups are the largest market resources for TV sales. The high-end marketization of SONY TV positions itself as a high-consumption product. However, with the development of the market, the penetration rate of TV has become saturated in the user field with high consumption power. Now, the largest market is mainly in the middle and low-end user field. Therefore, when building a high-end market, appropriately launch products within the consumption capacity of middle and low-end users to maximize the size of the user market and integrate the high, middle and low levels of the market.

On the other hand, there is the problem of resource sharing between businesses. This business was a single isolated operating SONY TV, and now each brand by constantly looking for cooperation to achieve the purpose of resource sharing, faster in order to gain a foothold in the market in home appliances, SONY television this separation mode is likely to lead to the marginalization of the business, in the television industry, “bridge” between business development, can reduce risk, improve efficiency, Building the bridge of enterprise business resource sharing may become the development trend of enterprise in the future.

In short, in today’s rapid development of science and technology, in order to avoid being eliminated by the society, television business, in addition to solving the problems of high price, business dispersion and other problems, but also need to keep up with the development of The Times, according to the analysis of user demand related data to carry out brand layout. In addition, the TV industry needs a targeted layout. Smart TV products with beautiful appearance and diversified functions are conducive to improving users’ consumption experience. The TV industry, led by SONY, should be prepared to fend off attacks on more beige appliances such as computers.

Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110