2017 is a rather difficult year for most TV manufacturers. Since the continuous rise in 2015-2016, the TV market has been in a downturn since the beginning of 2017. According to the monitoring data of the G-FTV China FPTV Retail Market, 2017 Retail sales in January-October dropped 11.7% YoY and are projected to decline 9.6% YoY in the full year, with many television giants falling into declining profits or even losing money.
The main reason for this phenomenon is that TV panel prices have risen since the second half of 2016, making the original profit pressure on the thin market as a whole, and all brands have chosen to face the rising costs in 2014. In addition, 2014 Internet companies in the second half of the year with the help of capital and smart TV terminal retail market, making the television market increasingly intense competition.
In order to quickly seize the market, the Internet brand set off an unprecedented price war, of which, Music is hit the 'zero purchase' slogan, the traditional brands have also had the option to cut prices, resulting in the market price fell rapidly in 2015-2016 .
With the increasing popularity of smart TVs and the rapid decline of retail prices, the TV market in 2015-2016 has witnessed a large growth. According to GfK China's flat-panel TV retail market monitoring data, Up 9.6% and 5.2% respectively, but the major demand for TV, the mature, highly saturated product, comes from replacement. The rapid growth in the market also implies an advance overdraft of consumption, which is exactly what another market slump in 2017 Layer reason.
In terms of channels, the online market, which is very price-sensitive, has lost its high growth dividend and the retail volume grew by only 2.3% YoY for the first ten months of 2017 to 2017. The offline market, which was originally shrinking, was even more aggravated. From January to October 2017 Retail volume dropped 17.5% YoY, setting the largest YoY decline in January-October.
The rising cost, the downturn of the market and the intensified competition all push the enterprises out of breath, but on the other hand, tremendous pressure can force the whole industry to innovate and seek breakthroughs.
High value-added television market has shown significant growth
Since the beginning of this year, all brand manufacturers have focused their strategies on large-size and high-end products in order to cope with market downturn by increasing single gross profit margin, which is also in line with the current market environment for optimized consumption. , Consumer generation is undergoing a shift.
People born in 1980-1995 become the new mainstream consumer groups. Their education level, accumulation of personal wealth and daily social environment will all influence the concept of consumption subtly. The most obvious is the pursuit of quality of life. To them, this is also a kind of self-expression, and the new generation of consumer groups' quest for quality of life can be understood as' buying a TV ': willing to pay for higher value-added television.
Large screen can bring a better visual experience, more and more consumers turn their attention to large-screen TV products.According to GfK China flat-panel TV retail market monitoring data, January-October 2017, 55-inch and above TV Retail sales rose 22.6% YoY and accounted for 40% of the total retail market. The average size is expected to exceed 48 inches in 2017.
Speaking higher value-added, quality improvement is also essential, based on the 4K resolution, wide color gamut technology and HDR technology is widely used in high-end TVs.According to G-FTV China flat-panel TV retail market Monitoring data show that retail sales of TVs using wide color gamut technology increased by 80.7% YoY in 1H01 and HDR TVs grew more rapidly in the first ten months of 2017 with retail volume increasing by more than 350% YoY.
In order to further enhance the quality of traditional LCD TVs, Quantum Dot TV uses a distinctive backlight technology to bring more possibilities for display performance.After Samsung released its first quantum dot TV in 2015, TCL and popular TV was also joined in 2017, making the Quantum Dot TV camp more plump.According to GfK China's flat-panel TV retail market monitoring data, from January to October 2017, the retail sales of quantum dot TV increased by 48.3% from the same period of last year.
In addition, OLED TV is one of the representatives of high-end TV OLED TV with its slim body, exquisite picture quality has attracted many consumers seeking high-quality television .According to GfK China flat-panel TV retail market monitoring Data show that retail sales of OLED TVs increased 152% from January to October 2017. Despite the relatively limited size of the OLED TV market at present, its potential is undoubtedly enormous.
Sony's OLED TV released in 2017 and its unique screen sound field technology not only consolidated Sony's 'black technology' status, but also became a hot topic in the high-end TV market. Some domestic manufacturers also released 2K-resolution OLEDs TV, friendly retail prices greatly reduce the threshold for the purchase of OLED TVs this year, Apple's flagship model for its latest generation OLED screen with OLED technology used in mobile phones and TVs, but also made OLED One of the hottest topics at the moment.
Artificial intelligence and television integration development
As the hardware technology continues to evolve, the TV intelligence is also making continuous progress, with artificial intelligence technology attracting the most attention.With the launch of the 4A series of televisions focusing on artificial intelligence in March this year, major domestic and foreign manufacturers Artificial intelligence technology has been introduced, giving more features of traditional television.At the same time, artificial intelligence television as a smart home access port, is expected to become China's most popular set of display and interaction in one Wisdom port.
According to GfK China's flat-panel TV retail market monitoring data, more than 10 brand manufacturers nationwide have launched TV products mainly focusing on artificial intelligence. These include not only traditional TV manufacturers such as Hisense, TCL and Changhong, but also millet, Micro-whales, Storm TV and other Internet companies.
In the first ten months of 2017, artificial intelligence television accounted for 3.9% of total retail sales, of which 7.7% was accounted for in October. The proportion of retail sales of artificial intelligence television has shown a steady growth. In the future, artificial intelligence will likely become television Standard.
Although the semantic understanding ability is poor, continuous dialogue instability, lack of deep learning ability and other issues remain the main reason for the consumer satisfaction with the artificial intelligence TV, but with the development of artificial intelligence technology, industry standards, consumers Interactive experience will also continue to be improved, at the same time, with the 'smart home' common development, the future worth the wait.
Trendy consumer era
In fact, in recent years, as consumers become increasingly favored for high-end products, the phenomenon of trendy consumption not only appears in the television industry.
Large appliances, the refrigerator has been developed from the double-door to open more artificial intelligence technology has also been used in high-end smart refrigerator, remote control, food records, recipes recommended and online ordering functions are gradually realized.According Gfk China refrigerator In the retail market monitoring data, from January to October 2017, the retail sales of smart refrigerators accounted for more than 30% of the high-end market of more than RMB10,000.
Small appliances, hand-held putter vacuum cleaner with its advantages of wireless, portable and smaller, quickly occupy the vacuum cleaner high-end market.A lot of the original 'short board' is also gradually solved, more and more manufacturers to introduce suction stronger, According to GfK China vacuum cleaner retail market monitoring data, from January to October 2017, the retail volume of hand-held putty vacuum cleaners has accounted for 35% of the overall vacuum cleaner market.
2018 TV market outlook
Although the television market is undergoing 'Waterloo' in 2017, we have reason to believe that the market will see a mild recovery in 2018 as the panel prices re-enter the down cycle in the second half of 2017.
Three panels will be put into production in China by the end of 2017 to 2018. Although the average size will erode some of the newly added panel capacity, the downward trend in panel prices will hardly change in the short term. Of the three new panel makers, BOE Hefei However, there are still some uncertainties about the improvement of the yield and the release of production capacity in China, but the two 8.6-generation lines of China Xianyang and Chengdu Panda Chengdu still contribute to the improvement of global panel supply.
As we all know, the panel plays a very important role in the manufacturing cost of TV sets, and the fluctuation of the panel prices directly affects the profit level of the whole machine manufacturers. The high generation line panel production capacity continues to release and the cost pressure is relieved, bringing more retail sales promotion activities According to the prediction data of GfK China's flat-panel TV retail market, the size of China's TV market is expected to reach 45.75 million units in 2018, an increase of 3% over the same period of the previous year. The market size of large-size 55-inch and above TVs will exceed 2000 Million units.
In the meantime, with the dual drive of manufacturers 'product upgrades and consumers' trendy consumer spending, the future flat-panel TV market will be fiercely contested by 'bigger size, more powerful features and higher added value.' Despite the panel price Of the callback in the short term for the downturn in the flat-panel TV market can play a relieve role, but in the long run, the brand manufacturers should still increase R & D investment in high value-added products to avoid falling into the endless price competition.