The domestic color TV market is facing the "most serious" long-term recession in history. From 2019 to 2021, the market size of the industry has declined by more than 7% for three consecutive years, so that this judgment has no suspense in the industry. And this change has gone beyond what can be explained by the "epidemic" alone – because the recession process covers different periods before and after the epidemic.
In this context, how color TV companies get out of the "cold winter" has become a problem that the industry must solve. In this regard, the industry has given two different prescriptions of "inner-volume self-help" and "exogenous development"!
How "bleak" is the color TV industry?
According to Aowei Cloud Network (AVC) data, the retail volume of China's color TV market in the first quarter of 2022 was 9.03 million units, down 8.8% year-on-year; Retail sales were 28 billion yuan, down 10.1% year-on-year. This is already the fifth consecutive year of "sharp decline" in the color TV industry in the first quarter.
Compared with the peak of the industry's historical sales six years ago, the size of the color TV market (including sales and sales) has shrunk by nearly 30%: in the first quarter of 2016, the retail volume of the mainland color TV market was 12.44 million units, and the retail sales volume was 38.2 billion yuan. If you take into account the rise of large-size color TVs in recent years, the average consumption display area of color TVs has increased by more than 10%, and the actual output capacity of the color TV market "unit display area" has dropped by as much as 40%.
In the color TV market, the bigger crisis is not the "shrinking scale", but the consumers are "not using color TVs"! According to Aowei Interactive Entertainment's monthly report on OTT large-screen user behavior, in January 2022, the average daily active scale of domestic smart TV terminals was 102.43 million units. This is far from the current scale of more than 300 million smart TV terminals in the mainland, covering more than 800 million people.
In fact, Zhu Zhongqing, assistant to the president of Konka Electronics And the general manager of the Marketing Division in China, released statistics at the new product launch that in 2016, the operating rate of mainland TVs was 70%, but by 2021, this set of data became 27.7%. How long have you not turned on the TV" has become a real problem. According to the data jointly released by the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University and CCTV Market Research Co., Ltd., the "only audience of TELEVISION media that has not decreased in viewership" is the elderly audience aged 65 and above.
"More people, especially young people, are using less or even not using television!" In this context, tv sales and replacement will naturally slow down. The service life of a single tv will also be extended. Coupled with the fact that some families choose not to buy TVs, the total scale of the color TV industry will inevitably shrink. The fundamental change behind this is the "irreversible trend of audiovisual entertainment diversification". That is, color TV is no longer fighting with color TV, but to face more differences in entertainment equipment such as IT, mobile phones, projection, XR and so on. The rigid demand of color TVs has been diluted as never before, and this process is also irreversible.
The color TV industry is self-help, and the "inner volume" competition has little effect
In the face of the "cold" market data of the color TV industry, the self-help of color TV companies has never stopped. The modalities used include "price drops" and "product innovations.".
Among them, the price reduction measures have no obvious impact on the overall scale of the color TV industry: because first, "color TV is already very cheap", consumers basically do not buy because of economic problems, or do not replace the color TV situation; second, the color TV market is sluggish, the core is the rise of "alternative" consumption, people watch TV time is reduced, color TV just demand has declined, this is not color TV price reduction can solve; third, innovative color TV product prices are not cheap, relying on "old-fashioned experience product price reduction", can not stimulate consumer enthusiasm.
At the same time, the innovation of color TV products is not a "panacea": including the development of large-size color TVs, for example, in the past three or four years, the sales of color TVs above 70+ inches have soared 10 times; social TV, game TV, educational TV and other differentiated functional product innovations, the corresponding product market share has developed from zero to nearly 10% of the total market size... These changes have effectively improved the unit price, gross profit and other operating indicators of color TV enterprises.
However, for the impact of the overall market trend of the color TV industry, innovative functional color TVs have not shown a strong influence. Industry analysis believes that innovative color TV products are more crowded out of the market of traditional functional products: this is the "self-help" of the inner-roll type. It is impossible to fundamentally change the diversified development trend of audio-visual entertainment, and it is impossible to reverse the embarrassment of the color TV just need to decline and the lack of operating rate, and it cannot change the "coldness" of the color TV industry. Of course, most studies also show that without the support of these innovations, the shrinkage of the color TV industry may be more intense.
Color TV enterprises have made efforts to diversify audio-visual and embark on a new road of open development
Under the cold winter of color TV, do color TV companies have a shortcut to "escape the day"? The answer is yes, and there is more than one road:
For example, the same is audio-visual consumption, in the past 5 years, color TV sales plummeted, the domestic intelligent projection product market size, but from a small one million, to nearly 5 million in 2021! That is, choosing a variety of audio-visual products and embracing a diversified audio-visual experience is the trend of the "consumer audio-visual" industry.
In this regard, Hisense and Changhong have laid out laser TVs and smart projections, Skyworth and Tencent Video have cooperated in smart projection and virtual reality product lines, and TCL Thunderbird has entered the XR/VR product market... Color TV companies have defeated the "audio-visual diversification" trend of color TV and built the first path of their own breakthrough. Although from the perspective of market size, these products are not comparable to the traditional scale of the color TV industry, but the long-term market growth potential under the "accumulation" is not easy to underestimate:
Industry experts pointed out that home and personal audio-visual consumption is reflecting the "trend" of three layers of diversification: the first layer is that the color TV products themselves are differentiated and diversified, such as the small and medium size of the bedroom color TV, the giant screen of the living room and the cinema-style experience, social TV, game TV, educational TV, etc.; the second layer is the diversification of audio-visual functional equipment, in addition to the traditional flat-screen TV, there are laser TVs, intelligent projection, XR virtual reality products, etc.; the third layer is, a wide range of audio-visual content carriers, including color TVs, Projection and other audio-visual full-time hardware, PC/NB, mobile phones, game consoles and other functions are the mainstay, but have strong audiovisual value of hardware.
In this three-tier diversified "audio-visual" pattern, color TV companies are bound to become "from developing a color TV with a value and an application characteristic" to developing a brand of "more kinds of value, more forms" of audio-visual consumer products. ——Grasping the diversified trend of audio-visual consumption upgrading is one of the inevitable paths for color TV companies to break through.
Color TV companies embrace the business display strategy and open up a new battlefield of "screen"
In addition to the upgrading of audio-visual consumer applications, color TV companies also regard "business display" as a "fundamental" market expansion direction. That is, the battle of "expansion" from civilian displays to commercial and engineering displays.
According to the "China Commercial Display Industry Full-Scenario Application Development Report (2021)", in 2021, the scale of the mainland commercial display traditional product market (including interactive whiteboards, projectors, LED screens, DLP splicing screens, commercial TVs, etc.) will exceed 200 billion yuan for the first time, and it is expected to exceed 300 billion yuan in 2025. In fact, since 2014, the compound growth rate of the domestic commercial display market has reached 24%, and the overall sales in 2020 have reached 180 billion yuan, surpassing the sales scale of the traditional color TV market.
Even if only the single-screen products of the LCD machine are calculated, the domestic commercial display market size will reach more than 60 billion yuan in 2021. It is close to half of the retail sales of 129.6 billion yuan in the color TV market in 2021. The scale of the commercial display market is huge, the growth rate is huge, and the potential is huge, which is already the consensus of the industry: in the past 10 years, the domestic commercial display market has grown by more than 3 times, and the decline in the higher peak period of color TV has reached 30%. In contrast, color TV companies cannot not move the "spring heart" of "Shangxian".
At the same time, the commercial display industry is still on the road of rapid development: first, although it is expected that the annual growth rate of the commercial display industry will drop to less than 20% in the next few years, but under the premise of a larger base, the absolute increment will still be very gratifying; second, in the development of the global commercial display market, the mainland market is the most advanced, for example, the domestic market consumption of lcd machine commercial display products exceeds half of the global scale - that is, the high growth of the global market business demand can be expected, and the mainland industry colleagues have a first-mover advantage; third, The rapid development of the commercial display industry is based on the generalization of audio-visual technology, the construction of smart society and digital society, AI and information technology revolution, and will continue to share the dividends of technological progress and social change.
In this context, it has become an inevitable trend for color TV companies to actively prepare for the commercial display market. For example, Hisense continues to lay out in the fields of laser engineering display, liquid crystal display, commercial embedded liquid crystal display, medical display, etc., and strategically invested in the upstream industry of mini LED display this year. Konka self-built LED display industry chain. Skyworth has made a large-scale layout in security display, engineering splicing display, LCD blackboard display, and LED commercial display. With the advantages of the upstream panel end, TCL continues to lay out on LCD display and LCD interactive display products, and the share of interactive whiteboard product shipments leads.
Color TV and other enterprises nugget the business, will inevitably bring about great changes in the industry
The general trend of color TV companies entering the commercial display market is "irreversible". This will inevitably change the traditional competitive pattern of the commercial display industry, and will also reshape the "industrial foundation" of color TV companies:
From the perspective of the business display industry, 10 years ago, it was the professional business display enterprises that "learned from the color TV brand", hoping to make the niche business display products achieve large-scale development; and today it is the color TV enterprises that learn from the "professional business display brand", hoping to bring the large-scale advantages, experience and technology of the color TV industry into the professional display field. This collision brings "multiple challenges" to the commercial display industry, such as scale value, capital and resource competition, and relative oversupply.
From the perspective of color TV companies, the commercial display market is different from the "big plate" characteristics of color TV display: the commercial display is a "small section" market of professional vertical segmentation. For example, hotel television and interactive conference boards are different types of products; projection engineering displays and LED large-screen projects are also completely different products; electronic price tag markets, such as "large-scale information solution products", and an independent large-screen display project, or "car display" this embedded component-type display products, is also a completely different "industry thinking, technical needs"...
That is, shangxian itself has inherent "vertical professionalism" and "industry diversity" needs. This is the "business industry characteristics" that color TV enterprises need to "face a new face" from the supply chain, service system, marketing and management structure, technology research and development and innovation system, assessment and evaluation system, etc. -- Solving these problems is no less than color TV companies recreating a "different" self. This transformation is undoubtedly a huge challenge, but once it is successful, it will also be huge.
It can be said that by exerting efforts to show business and further deepening in the diversified market of consumer audio-visual equipment, color TV companies are fully able to achieve "contrarian growth" under the "color TV cold wave". The cold wave of color TV is likely to be just a "historic status adjustment" of color TV, a simple subdivision category, rather than a "challenge" that "as a color TV brand and enterprise of display enterprises" cannot cope. ——Starting from the incremental display demand, color TV companies can completely walk out of the growth path outside the "narrow color TV products" and become the ultimate winners of the smart society in the opportunity of today's "display equipment and technology" development.
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