Will Sharp TV become the next LeTV?

There are two aspects of concerns about Sharp TVs: First, the low prices of foreign brands support the rebound of Sharp TV sales, but how long can the low-price effect last, and how long can users trust the low-price Sharp brand? Second, with all-out investment in LCD display technology, from 4K to 8K, how to cope with the impact of new display technologies such as OLED and laser, and what are Sharp's future differentiated competitive advantages?

Will Sharp TV become the next LeTV Super TV and be a flash in the pan in the color TV market? This is not an unfounded worry.

Although Sharp and LeTV are two completely different companies, the former is a long-established Japanese TV giant and the father of global LCD. Now, after joining the Foxconn Group, it has ushered in a new round of development momentum; the latter, as an upstart Internet TV company, has seen a surge in shipments from zero to tens of millions of units in the past three years, and has achieved a rapid rise in a short period of time by relying on the so-called "large-screen ecology" with free hardware and charged content, but is now stuck in a quagmire.

In a similar way, Sharp TV's shipments in China and other global markets rebounded rapidly from the end of last year, which is quite similar to the path of LeTV TV's "creating something out of nothing" in the Chinese market. It is the most typical "low-price competition". LeTV TV adopts "free hardware and paid content", while Sharp TV adopts "high-end foreign brands with low local prices". The only difference is that LeTV TV's low-price war burned investors' money, while Sharp TV's low-price war burned the money of major shareholder Foxconn, as well as the trust and reputation of a century-old Japanese brand.

In fact, after Sharp was sold to Foxconn Group, under the influence of the latter's business thinking and strategy, Sharp TV's performance miraculously achieved a rebound and recovery, and the company's stock price returned to more than 4 times the level of a year ago. It seems that everything is moving in a good direction:

In the Chinese market alone, Sharp's low-price war has become a normal practice, and its marketing promotion is constantly approaching new media and young users. Of course, the core that really drives the rapid rebound in Sharp TV sales is the low prices of foreign brands in China. In the overseas market, Sharp decided to recover the brand usage rights sold two years ago from its rival Hisense. Although this has publicly torn up the business contract between the two parties that year, it shows that Foxconn is really "using whatever means" to frantically grab the market in order to save Sharp TV performance.

In fact, this is highly consistent with LeTV's rise in the Chinese TV market over the past three years. In the past few years, there have been constant voices from the industry and the media questioning LeTV TV's development potential and growth space. However, in just two years, LeTV TV not only achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1 million units, but also staged the final madness after creating a shipment volume of 10 million units in three years. It even went to the United States to acquire the second largest color TV company in the United States. However, to everyone's surprise, the glorious LeTV TV eventually fell into the quagmire of "money burned, but the self-hematopoietic function has not yet been established." In the end, LeTV TV has gone from being a leader in Internet TV in the past to now struggling for life and death. Whether it can rebound in the later period is still unknown.

Now Sharp TV has just experienced a market rebound and business recovery driven by a low-price war. This does not mean that Sharp TV can continue to advance in the global market and achieve a sustained and substantial increase in market size driven by a low-price strategy. On the one hand, the global color TV industry is ushering in a round of transformation and upgrading to large-screen and high-end products. In the low-end market competition, "there is no lowest, only lower" competition will only drag companies into a quagmire of losses; on the other hand, whether Sharp's low-price strategy can continue to gain recognition from users, and how long the life cycle of LCD TVs will last in the future, these uncertain factors are restricting the rebound space and strength of Sharp TV.

As the global LCD king, the acquisition of Sharp TV by Foxconn Group can be seen as a typical "match made in heaven" of the industrial chain, and the reality is indeed so. Against the backdrop of rising LCD panel prices, and the lack of upstream panel supply chain advantages for a large number of Chinese companies, Sharp has indeed grabbed a certain market share by offering low prices. However, all the competitive advantages of both Sharp and Foxconn are based on LCD panel technology, and Sharp has always stubbornly believed that "after LCD, there is still LCD", completely ignoring the rise of emerging display technologies such as OLED, quantum dots, and lasers in the market. This undoubtedly lays a "strategic trap" for Sharp's future.

In the traditional LCD display technology track, Sharp undoubtedly has no crisis or pressure of survival or death; however, once this traditional display technology changes and is no longer the industry's leading and only one, how can Sharp continue to survive in the TV market? At present, the outside world has not seen the answer. Anyway, with the frequent price reduction promotions of Sharp TVs, the outside world has become worried about Sharp and even Foxconn!

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.