CNMO: Once upon a time, TV was the absolute number one in the minds of consumers, and almost every generation had the experience of sitting in front of the TV as a family and watching TV. But it is such a product that carries the memory of generations, and today, the status in the minds of consumers is not as good as it was then, and the TV has gradually become an ornament in the living room, especially in the past three years. From 2019 to 2022, the retail sales of color TVs in mainland China gradually decreased from 48.94 million units to 36.34 million units in 2022, which is the lowest point in history in the past 12 years.
Data source: Oviyun.com
With the liberalization of the external environment, the industry has maintained an optimistic attitude towards the development of the color TV industry, but from the first half of this year, the market is still contracting. According to data from Oviyun.com, in the first half of 2023, the sales volume of China's color TV market was 14.67 million units, down 12.2% year-on-year, and sales were 48.7 billion yuan, down 8.5% year-on-year.
While the market is shrinking, the industrial chain is rising in price. According to data from Qunzhi Consulting, the global LCD TV panel price maintained an upward trend in June ~ July 2023, and the price of 32-75-inch panels increased by 2-8 US dollars.
In such an environment, color TV products will inevitably usher in a wave of price increases, which makes the development of the already bumpy color TV industry once again cast a layer of haze. In such an environment, brands need to re-examine the external environment, especially for color TV products, in today's increasingly complex consumption chain, if you continue to innovate step by step on the original development path, it may be difficult to change this status quo.
Therefore, in the stock market, real estate downturns, panel cyclical fluctuations... In the context of changes on both sides of supply and demand, the TV industry needs a new round of value restructuring.
Game TV, color TV industry new kinetic energy
From the perspective of the market, over the years, in the basic stereotyped pattern, the overall sluggish performance, and the endless price war, the development of the color TV market has not had much bright spots. Under the rendering of this sentiment in the market, how should color TV brands explore?
For now, most brands are targeting market segments, adding special optimizations to their products for certain use cases. For example, in the current hot e-sports industry, game TV has become the focus of many brands, and it has indeed lived up to the attention of brands and has developed rapidly by riding the east wind of e-sports.
According to data from Oviyun.com, the retail sales of game TVs in the first quarter of 2023 were 1.518 million units, a year-on-year increase of 89.9%. And it expects that the game TV market will reach 8.5 million units in 2023, accounting for 24%.
It is not difficult to see that at a time when the development of the industry is blocked, game TV has opened a new growth channel for the industry. Moreover, through the growth of game TVs, we can see that the decline of the color TV industry is not that modern families do not need the category of TVs, but that they want products that are more in line with their consumption concepts.
At the same time, this also means that there is no future for the extensive development of pure price and scale, and the color TV industry wants to get rid of the development dilemma for many years, and needs to keep up with the needs of market users and continue to create high-experience technology products, which is the future development direction of the TV industry.
Resonating with esports users, Sharp leads gaming TV
The rapid development of game TV is inseparable from its silky and smooth game viewing experience and strong immersion large-screen viewing experience, which meet the needs of e-sports users for large-screen products. Therefore, in the context of the increasingly popular game TV, how to meet the needs of e-sports users more deeply has become a must-answer question for brands.
The house secretary noticed that in this new blue ocean market, Sharp, known as the "father of liquid crystals", took the lead in taking action.
Recently, Sharp launched the new S7 series of gaming TVs, which are available in three sizes: 65-inch, 75-inch and 86-inch. The biggest highlight of this product is the optimization for game scenarios. Sharp S7 series has a full-channel 4K 120Hz refresh rate blessing, high resolution and high brush For e-sports users, the most intuitive change is that the picture is clear and the movement process is smoother, with MEMC all-round motion compensation, so that for some high-dynamic scenes, there will be no obvious stuttering and separation.
Under the premise of high brush, it also supports 120Hz ALLM automatic low latency/VRR adaptive refresh rate, which can automatically adjust the screen refresh rate to the ideal state according to the input frame rate of different scenes, whether it is for watching movies or games.
In terms of game content, Sharp S7 also supports START cloud games, supporting 50+ Tencent games, which can be played without downloading and installing.
In addition to meeting the rigid needs of e-sports users through high refresh rate, the product needs better audio and video performance in order to make it a game TV in the true sense, in this regard, Sharp S7 series application of cadmium-free wide color gamut technology, and thanks to the new painting PureAI picture quality engine, so that the picture presents dark field details without loss, bright field picture without distortion; In terms of sound quality, the Sharp S7 series has the blessing of DolbyVISIONATMOS, and with the existence of DTSVirtual:X, it can present the original sound of the content more realistically, bringing a true sense of immersion.
"Same frequency resonance" with e-sports users, so that Sharp TV in the color TV industry new incremental market to take the lead, through in-depth understanding of the needs of e-sports users, to meet their needs to follow the trend, game TV from hardware, software and content aspects of comprehensive optimization, so that it has new scenes, experience, so that e-sports users are more willing to have close contact with the large screen, which can naturally win the market.
Written at the end:
For color TV products, the continuous upgrading of picture quality is an aspect of the evolution of the industry, but for a long time, users have been "numb" to the publicity of picture quality upgrades. Through the explosion of game TV, we can also see that for consumers, compared with picture quality upgrade products, the innovation of scenes can arouse their desire to buy.
Therefore, scene innovation is what color TV brands should pay more attention to at present, to meet the needs of users in different scenarios, to aim at the lives of users, and to innovate around their new lifestyle, in order to gradually open up new growth space for the color TV industry.