Competition is getting fierce in 2016. What will the color TV industry compete for?

In 2015, the global color TV market has quietly changed, with Japanese brands gradually declining and Chinese brands rising rapidly. At the same time, the appeal of the domestic living room continues to soar, and more brands are entering to grab market share. Under such circumstances, the Chinese color TV market in 2015 was full of open and covert fighting: new brands poured in, old brands transformed, and foreign brands declined; the price war from upstream to downstream is still going on, and the battle for ecology has begun; the technological competition is endless, and cutting-edge technologies such as OLED, quantum dots, curved, ultra-thin, and split have emerged one after another.

The color TV market is still growing sluggishly in 2016, while competition among manufacturers continues to intensify. Under such circumstances, what will be the focus of competition in the color TV industry? According to the 2015 TV and Future Industry Development Report released by Hisense, the hot spots in the color TV market in 2016 will still focus on intelligence, picture quality and large screens. Only those who focus on the high-end large-screen market can make a difference. Brands with weak technological innovation capabilities and slow transformation speed will be in danger of falling behind.

Competition 1 - Intelligence

After decades of development, my country's color TV industry has achieved remarkable results. Faced with the rapid changes in science and technology, increasingly strengthened resource and environmental constraints, and fierce international competition characterized by innovation and technological upgrading, Chinese color TV companies have clearly realized that they must use innovation to enhance their comprehensive competitiveness. The transformation and upgrading of the color TV industry is becoming increasingly obvious, with endless product innovations and ever-changing technological innovations. Especially on the road to smart TVs, Chinese brands far surpass Japanese and Korean brands in the control and interactive experience of smart TVs. At present, there are several Chinese companies with more than 10 million smart TV activations, and they will be the first to benefit from the living room economy.

According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, the value of the living room economy reached RMB 8.9 billion in 2015, with the maturity of the video ecosystem as the primary factor. In 2015, the TV video ecosystem generated RMB 5.7 billion in profit, a 1.4-fold increase from 2014. It is expected that the video ecosystem will continue to double in profit in the next 2-3 years. At the same time, games and e-commerce have entered the user's field of vision as new content for smart TVs, and their ecological profit models are gradually maturing. In 2015, the TV game ecosystem generated RMB 1.7 billion in profit.

In 2016, the supply of smart TV content will be further enriched, and content providers will also accelerate the pace of payment and advertising push. According to data provided by Haishiyun, the average daily usage time of each service in 2015 was 32% for live broadcast service, 31% for on-demand service, and 19% for game service. Benefiting from the popularization of smart TV, value-added services represented by video on demand and TV games will also become the focus of competition among manufacturers in the future.

Competition 2: Image Quality

As the competition for TV viewing time and content becomes increasingly fierce, the era in which picture quality was king seems to be gone forever. However, after a round of marketing bombardment by Internet brands, consumers are becoming more rational in their choice of TVs. The enthusiasm for Internet transformation of TV companies has begun to cool down, the market has returned to calm, and manufacturers have begun to focus on the development and innovation of independent display technology. The trend of TV returning to picture quality is gradually emerging, and it will also become the main theme of competition among companies in 2016.

In 2015, the competition for the next generation of display technology was heard everywhere: OLED entered the "first year of product launch" in 2015. OLED display technology is the driving force for future display development. Products have expanded from 2K to 4K, and from flat to curved. In 2015, the retail volume of OLED TVs was 43,000 units, accounting for 0.1%. As China's independent intellectual property, laser display provides Chinese color TV companies with an opportunity to "change lanes and overtake". In 2015, the retail volume of laser TVs was 1,870 units, accounting for 0.003%.

The parallel and integrated existence of various display technologies such as ultra-high definition, OLED, ULED, quantum dots, wide color gamut, and laser TV also shows that manufacturers are focusing their competition on picture quality. The competition in picture quality technology will become the core gap between new brands and brands with technical foundations, which also requires Internet brands to work hard on their internal strengths, otherwise they will be short-lived.

Competition 3: Large Screen

"Whoever controls the big screen controls the world." In 2015, the global demand for super-large TV screens continued to increase. Whoever occupies the large screen market will seize the opportunity in the color TV industry. DisplaySearch data shows that the global 65+ shipments increased by 31.96% in the first three quarters of 2015, and the trend of large screens for color TVs is very obvious. However, the global large screen market has long been occupied by foreign brands. In the first three quarters of 2015, foreign brands accounted for more than 60% of the global 65-inch+ shipments. In the future, Chinese brands should focus more on the large screen market.

Aowei Cloud Network predicts that the retail volume of 65-inch TVs will grow rapidly in 2016, with a market share of 4.4%, up 2.4 percentage points from 2015; the retail volume of 49-inch TVs and 55-inch TVs will maintain a growth trend, with market shares of 8.8% and 18.4%, up 2.0 percentage points and 2.9 percentage points from 2015. In 2016, the trend of larger sizes will be more obvious, with larger sizes. The market share of 65+ TVs will reach 5.9%, up 3.4 percentage points from 2015. The desire for large-size TVs will further stimulate consumers' enthusiasm for consumption, and the trend of large-screen TVs has gradually emerged. At the beginning of 2016, some brands have launched 65+ size TVs, which will also become the focus of competition among manufacturers.

In 2014, there were 5 Internet brands in the Chinese color TV market. In 2015, new Internet brands entering the Chinese color TV market include: Damai, 17TV, CAN, PPTV, Weijing, Fengxing, Meng Brand, Baofeng, and Rongwei; in 2016, the brands that will enter the market include: CNC, Youku, Mango TV, and Tencent. In 2016, the number of Internet brands in the color TV market will reach 18, and the competition in the color TV market will be more severe. Hisense believes that although Internet brands have an impact on the market, traditional enterprises that have completed the intelligent transformation first and have a deep technical foundation can still maintain their leading advantages, and the transformation has entered the harvest period.

In the future, those who want to break out of the red ocean of the color TV market must be all-round manufacturers with both hardware operation capabilities and ecosystem construction capabilities. It can be predicted that in 2016, China's color TV industry will undergo a transformation of the entire industry chain. Whoever is the first to grasp the pain points of users, complete the transformation and upgrade to become an all-rounder will have the potential to become a true market leader.

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.