Returning home during the Spring Festival holiday, many people's feelings are: sitting down and watching TV for half a day or even a day like when they were children, it becomes unlikely.
Aiyouteng's massive TV programs can also be watched on the mobile end, and their VIP members only support the use of video software on mobile phones, tablets, and computers, and do not support the TV side; and in the cable TV programs, it is not a mother-in-law drama, an anti-Japanese spy drama and other programs that look a bit "ancient", or the animation bombing of children.
Even if you sit down and watch, you must also consider the time period and viewing place, how to say it is not as convenient as mobile phones and tablets. When watching TV, chatting, playing games, online shopping, etc. will always pull your eyes back to mobile devices.
Compared with the previous era when families sat happily around the TV to chase dramas, now the more high-definition, large-screen TVs seem to be becoming more and more awkward.
In contrast to this embarrassment, 2021 is a difficult year for China's color TV industry, with the market retail volume reaching the lowest level in 12 years, falling below the 40 million mark to 38.35 million units, down 13.8% year-on-year. For color TV companies, it is even more difficult to face the dual pressure of scale and profit.
Of course, such a dilemma can be attributed to the "high saturation" of the color TV market - in 2013, the number of color TV households in the mainland exceeded 115 units/100 households, and in 2021, it reached 121.8 units/100 households.
But in addition, a phenomenon that is visible to the naked eye is that with the popularity of smart electronic products such as mobile phones, TVs have become more and more marginalized, and even reduced to living room furnishings, and "the TV set at home has not been seen for a long time" is the true portrayal of many people.
When television loses the necessity of watching, does it die? Or will it be reborn in another way?
Author | Lingzhu Editing | Zima Shang Cain Research Team Business Group This article is the original article of Shang Cain Society, please contact the background for reprinting
A television set that fell from the altar
There is a clip in the movie "Hello, Lee Huan Ying":
The heroine, Jia Xiaoling, traveled back to 1981 and wanted to buy a TV for her young mother, Li Huanying, to buy a TV. In this way, the mother will become the first person in the factory to buy a TV, which is both the focus of the factory and the talk of showing off in front of relatives and friends.
In the movie, Jia Xiaoling staged a bitter love scene, pretended to be blind, and bought the TV softly and hard.
Leaving aside the plot of the movie, for people who did not have a "protagonist aura" in that era, buying a TV was not as smooth as in the movie.
The mainland television industry began in the late 1950s, when the state-owned Tianjin Radio Factory (712 Factory) produced a 14-inch black-and-white television set using domestic electronic tubes and Soviet components, named after the "Beijing brand".
At that time, the production of the "Beijing Brand" was limited and the cost was very high, and the price of each unit was close to 700 pieces, and not many people could touch it.
Later, the mainland also opened a trial production of color TVs, but due to the one-sided emphasis on "independence and autonomy", the annual output of color TVs produced was not more than a thousand units. At that time, the backbone factories of the electronics industry with strong strength were mainly supporting the national defense industry, and the production of radios and television sets was basically a small factory in a place with weak technology, and it was impossible to get up with large industry, and it was difficult to go up in output and technology.
The real start of large-scale tv production began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the mainland introduced modern TELEVISION production lines from Japan.
At that time, it was in the honeymoon period shortly after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and the color TV production technology and parts of Japanese enterprises such as Toshiba, Hitachi, Sanyo, and Panasonic began to flow to the mainland to the TV factories represented by Tiantian (state-owned Tianjin Radio Factory), South (state-owned Nanjing Radio Factory), Hai (Shanghai TV Factory No. 1), and North (Beijing Peony TV Factory), and the number of TV production lines introduced nationwide was as many as 110, and later adjusted to more than 60.
For a time, almost every province had at least one TV factory with different styles of names: Beijing, Triumph, Yellow River, Changhong, Peony, Venus, Coral, Great Wall, West Lake... In addition to some differences in trademarks and appearances, the overall difference is not bad, basically out of the same production line.
Even if a tv production climax was opened, the annual output of television sets in the country at the beginning of reform and opening up was only hundreds of thousands of units, the supply was very tight, or it had to be supplied by tickets, and "a ticket was difficult to find", at that time, whoever had a TV was a matter of face, and the family not only had to tighten the belt of their pants for a TV set, but also to see if they had the luck to get a ticket, and people who had no way out did not dare to think about it.
So a unique picture that belongs to the 80s is that people with the ability get a TV set, dozens of neighbors get together to watch, they sit shoulder to shoulder and sit next to the boxy TV, and the vivid and lively picture brings the experience that the radio cannot bring, making the people present happy.
It should be emphasized that the replacement of general electronic products is the component industry to drive the whole machine industry, such as the emergence of transistors, integrated circuits led to the popularity of computers, LCD, PDP devices appeared to bring large-screen flat-screen TVs. However, the mainland's industrial base is poor, the shortage of funds, can not start from the components a little bit, the TELEVISION industry to take the "reverse development model" - the first introduction of the whole machine production line, the use of imported components, to ensure the quality level of the whole machine, and then list the required components specifications and quality levels, as the target of the supporting factory, and then which components meet the standard, first use which to replace the import.
In this way, in less than ten years, the mainland has completed the localization of the first generation of color TV, in addition to some raw materials, most of the components can be produced in China, and the output of television sets has also reached the level of millions or even tens of millions of units, and has begun to enter more people's homes.
Taking off with the television industry are a variety of classic programs launched by major television stations, such as the "Spring Festival Gala" launched by CCTV in 1983, "Journey to the West" in 1986, "Dream of the Red Chamber" in 1987, "Longing" in 90, "Legend of the New White Lady" in 92, "I Love My Home" in 1994, etc., many of which have higher ratings than 90%.
These classics broadcast on television at different times brought a rich experience that was unimaginable to the family sitting around every night, brought the neighbors after tea and dinner, and it is said that when "Desire" was broadcast, the crime rate in the country dropped by 30%, and the thieves all went home to watch TV.
The post-90s generation also had such a childhood experience: they were secretly watching TV at home alone for fear of being discovered, and then desperately trying to find a way to cool down the TV before their parents returned.
In that era when material conditions were still relatively scarce, children wore simple clothes and watched the same progress every week of "Huan Zhu Ge ge", "Legend of the New White Lady", "Tianlong Babu", "Happy Base Camp" and so on. In the Chinese New Year's Eve night of firecrackers, the whole family stood by the TV set waiting for the appearance of the stars who had long disappeared in the Spring Festival Gala, laughing and laughing.
It should be said that at that time, the TV set was the symbol of home, there was a TV where there was a home, and around the TV, there were mothers who were busy playing sweaters, fathers who were not so busy, uncles and aunts who occasionally came to visit the door, children who watched TV and did not want to write homework...
However, more than thirty years have passed, and the electronic products we use to dissipate our leisure time are also rapidly iterating.
Color TV technology by leaps and bounds, plasma TV, LCD TV and then OLED TV, the TV set is getting bigger and bigger, getting thinner and thinner, the color and clarity are getting better and better, the color TV company is walking on the infinitely beautiful Kangzhuang Avenue, but halfway out of a smart phone - both with phone calls, photography, watching video and other functions of the entertainment artifact, the hegemony of the TV set in the years after today fell.
The emergence of smart phones has not only impacted the development of the SLR and camera industries, but also seriously hit the TV market.
Now smart phones, smart tablets and mobile PCs and other electronic products occupy most of our leisure time; and the emergence of a variety of software such as short video APPS, news APPS, and live app on the Internet has brought users a very different experience, and has also changed the path for people to get information, news, and advertising from TV.
In addition, mobile games can be called the "black hole" that devours time, and the game is played, who still watches videos, let alone TV.
Traditionally, the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labour time for the production of that commodity; in the world of the Internet, the value of a commodity is determined by the total time of the user consumed by the commodity. Money follows the eye of users, who are increasingly spending their time on social media, apps, and games rather than television.
An important turning point is that in 2013, the Us Internet advertising revenue surpassed the radio and television advertising revenue for the first time, and In 2014, China also achieved this, and the glory of traditional television is not there. Judging from the decline in color TV delivery in recent years, the atmosphere of the color TV industry is somewhat solemn.
After the television set, which was once a luxury, became the "standard" for every family, it seems to have been relegated to a dispensable object in the eyes of the new generation.
The winner of a brutal fight
In the 1990s, when domestic TV manufacturers were at their most beautiful, many people still remembered the vigorous color TV war at that time.
During this period, the mainland's color TV production capacity expanded sharply, coupled with the production capacity transferred by foreign investors to the mainland, the total production capacity exceeded 40 million units / year by the end of the 1990s, but the total domestic demand plus exports was less than 30 million units / year.
The supply is far greater than the demand, the color TV market needs to be shuffled, and a price war without gun smoke is being fought fiercely.
At that time, some core technologies of color TVs were still controlled in the hands of foreign businessmen, and problems such as the serious convergence of domestic color TVs were becoming increasingly serious. Since there is not much difference between manufacturers in terms of products, the weapons for major color TV manufacturers to compete for market share are left with price cuts.
The price war in the color TV industry, how can not avoid is the changhong that has blown the horn many times.
Time set back to 1958, a group of military workers with shovels set up an airborne fire control radar production base on a wheat field on the outskirts of Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, which was called the state-owned Changhong Machine Factory, which was the predecessor of the Changhong Group. Since then, Changhong, the thunderous name of China's color TV industry, has been born.
As a factory established in the military industry, Changhong fell into a deadlock of no money, no work, no food after many years of vigorous development because of market changes and management changes, and had to find another way out, and the change in Changhong's fate began with Ni Runfeng, the factory director who took office in 1985.
After taking office, Ni Runfeng set his sights on the color TV piece of incense. The following year, he vigorously defied the public opinion and introduced the latest generation of color TV production lines from Panasonic in Japan, laying the foundation for Changhong to become the future "color TV king".
However, at that time, the domestic introduction of foreign eliminated production lines, and mostly 18 inches and below, large-screen color TV technology has been monopolized in the hands of the Japanese, Chinese to buy large-screen color TV, can only choose foreign goods.
This situation allows foreign brands to occupy nearly 80% of the Chinese color TV market, especially Japanese brands such as Sanyo, Hitachi, panasonic, etc., and the price of large-screen color electric is thousands of dollars, hollowing out countless wallets of Chinese.
Chinese color TV companies are technically facing the siege of foreign brands, and many small businesses are competing but even began to sit and wait for death.
In 1989, the state began to impose a special consumption tax on color TV, and the introduction of the tax order led to a backlog of products and shortage of funds for many domestic color TV companies, including Changhong. In order to survive, on August 9, 1989, Changhong began to reduce prices, each price was reduced by 350 yuan.
Just as the so-called "times create heroes", Changhong's simple and rude operation unexpectedly seized a large number of markets, obtained a large amount of funds for technology research and development, and other enterprises also took action.
In the next few years, the mainland color TV brand practiced guns and hoarded soldiers, and vowed to compete with foreign-funded enterprises. In terms of technology, design and other aspects have been greatly improved.
But Ni Runfeng saw very clearly that in order to compete with foreign brands, the advantage of technology is actually not large, and to defeat foreign brands, we must pour out the "strength of the whole country", integrate domestic resources, eat small fish, large enterprises eliminate small enterprises, and large enterprises make money, so that they can have more funds to engage in research and development, and then raise the industry level.
That is to say, to beat foreign brands does not require hundreds of color TV companies in China, seven or eight is enough.
In March 1996, Changhong announced a price cut again, with a price reduction of 8%-18%, which was called "jumping price" by the outside world, igniting the fuse of the color TV price war.
Just a month after the price war began, Changhong's market share jumped to 19%, an increase of 7.9% over before the price cut. By the end of the year, Changhong sat firmly on the throne of the "Color TV King". At that time, for every three color TVs sold in China, one was from Changhong, one was a foreign brand, and one was another domestic brand.
Under the pressure of Ni Runfeng's step by step, other domestic color TV companies such as Konka, TCL, Panda, etc. competed to reduce prices, and many small enterprises that had previously divided one side and were small and prosperous quickly withered away, and the color TV industry has since entered an era of market division by a small number of large companies.
Changhong uses this direct but efficient approach to solve complex industrial integration problems. Since then, the price war as an immediate means has been adopted by many TV companies, according to incomplete statistics, Changhong in March 1996 launched the price war less than 5 years, there were 5 more color TV industry price wars.
For this reason, domestic color TV companies have formed price alliances in June and September 2000 to formulate the minimum retail price limit for color TVs, but such price alliances are short-lived every time, color TV companies are forced to expand the pressure of market scale or choose price wars, and even foreign brands are forced to equalize price competition with domestic brands.
After a round of survival of the fittest, by about 2008, TV brands represented by skyworth, Konka, Hisense, TCL and Changhong five major domestic brands are in an absolute dominant position in occupying the minds of consumers, the market share of foreign brands has been squeezed to less than 30%, and some brands have withdrawn from the Chinese market.
You can never jump out of the strange circle of price wars
In the economic crisis around 2008, the national strategic cash subsidy to stimulate the demand for rural home appliance market, the rise of domestic TV companies have eaten the "home appliances to the countryside" and "old for new" and other policy dividends, taking the opportunity to further expand the three- and four-level market, promote the popularity of flat-screen TVs in the three- and four-level markets, and increase market share again.
According to media reports, in the sales of color TVs in the countryside of home appliances, the head domestic brands occupy 90% of the market share, while foreign capital including Samsung, Sharp and other big brands are basically excluded, and the market share is further shrinking.
Source: AVC REVO
But by 2013, as a series of stimulus policies drew to a close, new rivals for traditional TV companies came, and "Internet TV" fell from the sky.
Internet companies generally believe that TV is the core screen second only to mobile phones, and the content on mobile phones can be completely grafted on TV, so that the content can be further expanded.
As a result, LeTV TV, iQiyi TV, Xiaomi TV, Storm TV, etc. have blown a whirlwind in the field of Internet TV, and a new round of competition has broken the original calm.
Under the banner of "Internet TV", the way for Internet companies led by LeTV to enter the market is still to reduce prices. LeEco did not intend to make money on hardware, but imitated Xiaomi's model of making mobile phones.
At that time, the rise of millet, almost with the "cost price" to sell mobile phone volume, its mobile phone system, processor, memory and other core hardware benchmarking Samsung, Apple and other first-line brands, but the price is less than half of the opponent, the average single-machine profit is only 2 US dollars, is Apple's 1/75, Samsung's 1/15, Huawei, OPPO, vivo 1/7.
How profitable is this?
Profit from Internet value-added services such as advertising, pre-installed APP, and game operation on mobile phones. For example, the mobile game "Original God" was once listed on the Xiaomi App Store, and the share between the two sides was 7:3, and Xiaomi as a channel could take 30%.
Therefore, although Xiaomi's Internet value-added business revenue has always been much smaller than mobile phone sales revenue, the gross profit is higher than the gross profit of mobile phones.
LeTV transplanted this model to tv, giving a blow to traditional TV companies that mainly rely on hardware to make profits.
Under the turmoil of Internet companies that have no core technology and rely on FOUNDRies to start, traditional TV brands are caught in a dilemma - whether they follow the trend and reduce prices, their performance will decline sharply.
LeTV has publicly declared that "selling a TV loses 400 yuan, and the larger the size, the more you lose", which can be described as pushing the price war to the extreme. After LeTV, Xiaomi, which is very good at price wars, has also come.
In September 2013, Xiaomi released the first generation of TV products and officially entered the color TV market. At that time, Xiaomi positioned the first 47-inch 3D smart TV as "the first TV for young people", priced at 2999 yuan, which can only buy a 40-inch brand at this price.
Lei Jun once said, "The same quality and performance of the product, each of our products, the price is very generous." The publicity of this concept of "cost performance" has further increased the number of "rice noodles" in a short period of time.
Since then, with the defeat of Jia Yueting in the United States, the Internet TV "one brother" LeTV has disappeared, but this has not stopped the momentum of other emerging forces in cross-border color TV.
After 2019, in addition to Xiaomi, mobile phone brands such as Honor, Huawei, and OPPO have launched their own TVs as core products in the intelligent ecosystem.
The color TV industry has never lacked new opponents and crossovers, and the traditional color TV companies that have been rhythmic again and again have gradually become more and more
To transform to the Internet, the use of the two big cards of channels and technology in hand to integrate intelligence and Internet thinking into television.
But what remains unchanged seems to be the price war.
Whenever 618, Double Eleven and other big promotions, the price of color TV always drops to a new low. Last year, at the 2021 autumn new product conference held by Xiaomi, the new Xiaomi TV 6 OLED was launched, and the first price of 55 inches and 65 inches significantly lowered the lowest price in the olED TV industry, setting off the "price war" of OLED TV.
For consumers, the color TV price war is undoubtedly a good thing, but it is easy for color TV companies to fall into the quagmire of low-level operation.
According to data, the profit of China's color TV industry in 2021 is as low as 1.8%, far lower than other traditional home appliances and hardware products such as smart phones, and it is currently one of the least profitable home appliance technology products.
Color TV companies should also cross-border and break through.
If you don't evolve, you'll die
In recent years, many color TV companies are considering "cross-border" - expanding the scene application circle of color TV, aiming at the field of commercial display, so that color TVs are not only used in the living room of the home in large quantities, but also can play a greater value in commercial displays.
According to IDC's 2021 China commercial large-screen market forecast: in 2021, the commercial large-screen display market shipments will reach 7.82 million units, an increase of 17% year-on-year.
Compared with the profit of less than 2% of household color TVs, commercial display can be as high as 10%.
Therefore, TCL, Hisense, Konka, Skyworth and other color TV manufacturers have begun to grasp the layout in the field of commercial display, in order to obtain a larger market space in the commercial display market with B TO B as the main business model.
In addition to cross-border, the signs of color TV companies breaking through to the high-end market are also very obvious, which is the key to the color TV industry from "price war" to "value war".
According to the analysis of Aowei Cloud Network, affected by the rise in raw material prices and product structure upgrades, LCD TV prices have been rising in recent years, in contrast, the high-end market OLED, Mini/Micro LED, laser, 8K and other product prices against the trend of downward trend, consumer demand for high-end color TVs all the way up.
The essential needs of users for TV products are nothing more than large screens, picture quality, sound effects, and experience.
Take OLED TV as an example, compared with LED TV, OLED TV has higher contrast, black is purer, and the shadow details are better; each pixel of it is self-illuminating, so no matter from which angle it is viewed, the color performance and picture brightness are almost the same; its display technology is more malleable and can be used for more complex modeling design, which can meet consumers' demand for a lighter, thinner and larger screen of the TV.
Compared with traditional LEDs, Mini LED has smaller particles, more delicate display effects, higher brightness, and is more power-efficient than OLED, and supports precise dimming, which will not produce uneven backlighting problems of LEDs.
Color TV manufacturers such as Konka, Sony, and TCL have launched high-end products with display technologies such as OLED, Mini/Micro LED, and lasers, and have competed for differentiation.
Some analysts believe that for China's color TV industry, the main theme of market competition in the next 3-5 years will move from quantitative increase to qualitative change, under the leadership of the head brand, the color TV industry will gradually move towards high quality, high profit, and large screen.
In addition to these, to pull users back into the living room, it may also be necessary to break through from content.
From black and white to color, from analog to digital, from HD to Ultra HD, from mono to panoramic... Since its birth, every big stride of television has been visual and auditory, and now hardware technology is close to the ceiling of innovation, and it is difficult to make major changes.
Even for consumers, the "capacity, technology, performance experience and brand quantity" of color TV products are a bit excessive.
We don't watch TV, we watch TV, we watch what's playing on it. In the era when information was not yet developed, the television set as a window for people to see the world, brought a very far-reaching impact, watching TV was the most important way of entertainment at that time, one after another TV dramas became classics in people's hearts. Nowadays, the limitations of content make it difficult for young people to find reasons why they must watch TV.
Many people have not seriously watched TV for a long time, even if they go home for the New Year, three generations of a family are in the same room, young people and even middle-aged people are holding a mobile phone, children are also buried in playing games on the tablet, and only the elderly at home are left watching TV.
When renting a house, for some "simple families", the tv set is not even more useful, and it is still a burden when moving.
Even if you occasionally want to watch your favorite TV series, you find that the video VIP members of IYoteng only support the use of video software on mobile phones, tablets and computers, and do not support TV.
Therefore, it is false that young people do not watch TV, and it is true that they do not watch TV.
Someone once asked: If a black-and-white TV set that can accept 30 channels is put together and a color TV that can only play a certain channel, which one do you choose? Most people undoubtedly choose black-and-white televisions, which also reflects the importance of content.
However, as a carrier of content, the advantages of mobile terminals are too obvious. This also makes many young people in addition to watching the Spring Festival Gala, large-scale sports events and other programs with a strong sense of ceremony, have put tv on the outside.
Public data shows that with the reduction of TV viewers, the current mainland TV operating rate has fallen from 70% to 30%. The era of hardware profitability alone is over, and now it is the era of winning by products and content services. In the future, the screen, image quality and function can no longer reach the real pain points of users, and the hardware-centered competitive thinking will inevitably undergo tremendous changes.
Nowadays, in order to better meet the needs of consumers in the new era, it has become a major trend to further enrich the content of TV sets with the "TV +" model.
According to the consumer survey data of Aowei Cloud Network, 54.2% of consumers want tv to have game functions, game TV is in line with users' tireless entertainment pursuits, and young people's obsession with playing games is more than any generation.
Nowadays, the advent of the cloud game era is more difficult to separate the game and the "big screen", if the function and performance of the TV is powerful enough, the advantage of its large screen can bring consumers a wider field of view and shocking experience, and various manufacturers want to seize the young user group who like to play games.
In addition, adding more interactive functions is also the direction for color TV companies to embrace young people. For example, intelligent control center, music center, monitoring center, etc.
There is also the rise of social television, such as smart screens, TVs equipped with smart AI cameras can not only achieve video calls, but also support AI fitness, and can also achieve fitness at home.
The appearance of these new contents attracts the younger generation to return to the living room, while exploring more new models in the combination of TELEVISION and other content, opening up a new space for profitability for the color TV industry.
In fact, since 10 years ago, there have been a lot of discussions about "whether television will die", including many views such as "television will lose the necessity of watching, and it is about to die", if television evolves into a display, interaction, and social center of home/business, it can exist in another way, coexisting with other new devices and new media.
At that time, should we call it "TV" or "Home/Business Display Center"?