Traditional TV brands avoid talking about price wars. Are they fearless or powerless?

The China Digital TV Annual Ceremony is known as the "Oscars" of the Chinese television industry and is the highest honor in the industry.

From the awards at this ceremony, we can see that traditional TV brands still dominate the entire industry. In the ceremony, Internet brands were not included in any of the five awards related to TV products.

In fact, according to the information released by Aowei Cloud Network, although Internet brands defeated international brands for the first time with a market share of 13.8% in the first quarter of 2016, the 76% market share of traditional brands shows that the market dominance is still in the hands of traditional brands.

However, faced with the current situation of declining sales after the market has expanded, representatives of several traditional TV brands did not elaborate.

As we all know, since the birth of Internet brands, the TV industry has suffered a disruptive impact in terms of price. Traditional brands have kept a low profile on price issues. Is it because they are unable to cope with such industry disruption, or do they have unique insights into price reductions?

Accumulating core technologies is the basic trend of development

It is believed that although prices force manufacturers to transform and leave the era of channel dominance and seek new selling points for products, in essence, as a display medium, technology and innovation are the foundation for the survival of television.

Without discussing whether the improvement of TV resolution or video resolution is the cause of the improvement in clarity, let's talk about the popular 4K. 4K video can only serve the majority of users after 4K TV becomes popular. For terminal users, the premise of enjoying high-quality content is to have a high-quality terminal device.

Taking 4K as an example, it is a hot topic among numerous manufacturers and users recently. This year is the “first year” of VR in China, and 4K also plays an important role in it.

Through 4K, we can clearly realize that when users experience more cutting-edge services, the priority upgrade must be hardware equipment, which we can call a technology upgrade.

Data released by AVIC Cloud Network shows that the penetration rate of UHD TV panels in key sizes reached 43% in 2016, compared with only 23% last year, proving that technological innovation still has very strong market prospects.

Curved and thin-film TVs are two new TV categories that only began to appear in the public eye last year. Although the growth has declined this year, as mid-to-high-end TV categories, they can occupy 2.6% and 5.3% of the market share respectively, which is enough to illustrate the market space brought by the application of cutting-edge technologies.

The dividends brought by online consumption scenarios are gradually disappearing, and consumers who have calmed down will inevitably turn their attention to the core selling points of smart TVs: display and content. Traditional TV brands may not be able to compete with Internet brands in terms of content, but the accumulation of core technologies is obviously their advantage. Playing to their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses and focusing on display technology is indeed a reasonable strategic deployment in the short term.

Offline main battlefield cannot afford to lose

As mentioned above, the disappearance of the dividends of online consumption scenarios is a common understanding of various electronic product industries in the past year. Many Internet TV brands that started out by relying on online consumption scenarios have begun to make plans and penetrate offline.

Relying on low sales prices and massive content resources that traditional industries do not have, Internet brands have begun to gradually enter the mainstream market. This year, Internet brands defeated foreign brands for the first time and occupied 13% of the market share, which is enough to show that Internet brands have opened up a certain situation offline.

For traditional brands, they can only keep up with the pace through a large number of large-scale promotional activities. Even if you are tired of following up, you have to stick to it, otherwise once the offline foundation is unstable, the survival of the brand will face a blow.

According to statistics, there will be as many as 18 large-scale TV-related promotional activities across the country in 2016. This can also reasonably explain why the market expanded by 7.4% this year, but the profit decreased by 1.2%.

Market cognitive bias is the biggest challenge

At this year's Digital TV Annual Ceremony, there was a set of very interesting data. When HDR technology appeared in the eyes of most people, it seemed that overnight the HDR product layout reached 5.2%. The ultra-thin screen and curved screen mentioned above actually experienced explosive growth after their high-profile appearance last year.

Perhaps this phenomenon is related to the maturity of technology, but in fact, it is closely related to the alignment of consumer perception with actual conditions.

The China Electronic Video Industry Association pointed out that most consumers today do not know how cheaply they can buy a high-tech TV. Data from Aowei Cloud Network also shows that there is a gap between users' expected consumption and actual consumption. Users expect to get the experience they actually find that they can get with less spending.

The above two points are enough to prove that the weak actual purchasing power of consumers is directly related to cognitive bias. Of course, this also shows that there is still at least one level of potential to be tapped in the current smart TV market. How to popularize cutting-edge technology is an important part of the development of the TV industry.

Industry reshuffle: Second-tier brands will lose their living space

In general, first-tier brands still occupy a dominant position in terms of technology accumulation and offline market share. Although being forced into a price war is undesirable, it is an inevitable trend for hardware prices to gradually fall with the development of technology, and the price impact should be within the expected range for first-tier brands. In terms of display technology and content services, first-tier brands can also freely control the development proportion, thereby gradually completing the transformation of the industry to adapt to the new market structure.

However, second-tier brands that have survived by taking advantage of the online consumption dividend in recent years cannot compete with Internet brands in terms of content, and it is difficult for them to surpass first-tier brands in terms of technology reserves, and their survival space will gradually be lost. The China Electronic Video Industry Association also predicted that second-tier brands will gradually exit the market in a decent manner next year.

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.