Smart TV feast is full of dangers

In recent years, smart TVs have gradually come into people's view. Looking around, almost all color TV brand manufacturers are promoting smart TVs. For a time, the smart TV market has become a fashion. However, after the prosperity, the potential crisis in the smart TV market cannot be ignored.

The core operating system has been hijacked

As we all know, the most core part of smart TV lies in the operating system, which is the same as smartphones. Whether it is Google's Android, Apple's iOS, or Microsoft's Windows, the operating system becomes the soul of the product.

As of now, almost all domestic smart TVs are equipped with Google's Android operating system, which is actually embarrassing for the Chinese market, which has many color TV companies.

In 2014, my country's color TV industry faced pressures such as slowing macroeconomic growth, insufficient consumer demand in the "post-policy era", and significantly rising costs in all links, as well as challenges such as serious product homogeneity, insufficient voice in core technologies, and shortened product life cycles. The color TV market continued to operate at a low level throughout the year, with overall demand narrowing and sales declining. Although color TV sales in the second half of the year rebounded from the first half of the year, it still could not reverse the industry's "dilemma".

For Chinese color TV enterprises with weak soft power, this is a time for deep reflection and vigilance. Some analysts pointed out that in the past two years, China's color TV industry has entered the era of smart TVs, and the color TV industry has moved from pure hardware competition to the stage of "software and hardware integration" competition. At this time, Google, which occupies most of the smartphone operating system field, has extended its claws to the field of smart TVs. Previously, the Chinese color TV industry, which had no technical accumulation in the IT industry, had no ability to develop a TV operating system and could only reluctantly adopt the Android operating system.

Panels are too dependent on Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese companies

According to the data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, from the perspective of industrial structure: in 2014, LCD TVs became the dominant market, accounting for 92.9% of shipments, LCD TVs accounted for 98.52% of the domestic market, PDP TVs accounted for 1.47%, and CRT TVs were basically phased out, with only exports. TV products using new display technologies such as ULED and OLED are gradually gaining attention from consumers.

The rise of new display technologies has caused great suffering to domestic companies that lack panel production capabilities. Industry insiders pointed out that the emergence of smart TVs will rapidly ITize the color TV industry, but in addition to being held hostage by Google in terms of operating systems, domestic brands are basically unable to be self-sufficient in upstream core components such as ultra-high-definition LCD panels, CPUs (central processing units), GPUs (graphics processing units), and memory.

No matter how color TV technology develops, the hesitant domestic brands are always led by the nose by foreign companies.

Industry insiders pointed out that the rise of smart TVs and ultra-high-definition TVs means that domestic brands are more dependent on foreign companies. Ultimately, the big winners in the ultra-high-definition and smart TV era will be upstream LCD panel manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Sharp, AUO, and Chimei, chip manufacturers such as Marvell, Qualcomm, F-MStar, Realtek, and MediaTek, and software vendors such as Google. The current situation of "increasing hollowing out" in China's color TV industry is extremely dangerous.

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.