Color TV industry is up and down

China's color TV market entered an unprecedented period of rapid growth in the first half of 2013. During the New Year's Day and the Spring Festival in 2013, the 3rd and 4th markets exerted their strength and made great strides in the 1st and 2nd quarters, achieving the first half of the rapid growth since 2008. However, with the end of the energy-saving subsidy policy, the color TV industry gradually entered the policy window period in the second half of 2013. At the same time, under the influence of a series of bad news such as the slowdown of economic growth, bank money shortage, and the suppression of the growth of the property market, China How the color TV industry took a good move in the post-policy era and re-accelerated it has become the focus of the industry's current hot debate.

Four factors superimposed to cause high growth in the color TV industry In the first half of 2013, the color TV industry embarked on a fast-growing route, which even created a new industry record in the second quarter. According to data released jointly by the China Electronics and Video Industry Association and AVC, the sales volume of domestic color TVs reached 23.01 million units in January-June 2013, up 29% year-on-year, and retail sales were 82.2 billion yuan, up 32% year-on-year. Among them, LCD TV sales were 21.8 million units, up 35% year-on-year, and sales volume was 77.6 billion yuan, up 37% year-on-year. The sales volume of plasma TVs was 1.03 million units, up 2% year-on-year, and the sales volume was 4.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 16%. Among them, comparing the year-on-year market size in the second quarter of the past four years, it can be seen that the market size in the second quarter of 2013 has created a new industry record.

In the first half of 2013, there were four reasons for high-speed growth in the color TV industry. First, the energy-saving subsidy policy ended, and the tail-watching effect was strong. Second, the intelligentization, large-screen, and high-definition of color TV products triggered a new wave of TV replacement; Third, the growth of real estate promotes basic demand; Fourth, the rapid development of e-commerce has contributed to the growth momentum of the color TV industry.

The news that the energy-saving Huimin Subsidy expires no longer continues to stimulate the frenzied sales of color TV companies. All manufacturers have used the energy-saving subsidy policy's final opportunity from January to May to speed up the promotion of energy-saving subsidies, making the first half of the year, especially the second quarter. Unprecedented rapid growth. According to AVC's monitoring data, in May 2013, the increase was the highest since 2008, reaching 46%, with 4.13 million units sold.

At the same time, diversification of color TV functions and accelerated replacement frequency are also the main reasons for the high growth of color TVs in the first half of the year. According to AVC's statistics, in 2011, China's urban and rural color TV market has sold more than 100 million flat-panel TVs. And the function of a large part of this product has already appeared a certain degree of backwardness.

After nearly two years of marketing and nurturing, a large number of emerging features have been introduced to the market, gradually shifting TV products from single-function consumer products to multi-functional consumer products, and product industrial design, appearance, border material, and product color that are updated year after year also make television Change from durable consumer goods to fashion consumer goods. In addition to the product itself changes, the background related to watching TV has also undergone major changes. High-definition television channels and 3D television channels have been launched one after another. IPTV, high-definition television set-top boxes, and Internet TV set-top boxes have come out. The software and hardware of the TV itself have been requested from the side. . In this context, the replacement surge hit again.

At the same time, the temporary release of the real estate market and the rapid development of e-commerce have laid a good external environment for the high growth of the color TV industry. The demand for real estate released from the end of last year to the beginning of this year laid a good foundation for the strong volume of TVs in the second quarter. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, during January-November 2012, the sales area of ​​commercial housing in 200 cities in China increased by 2.4% year-on-year, and the sales of commercial housing increased by 9.1% year-on-year. From January to December 2012, the two groups of data continued to grow, with an increase of 1.8. % and 10%; and in February-March 2013, the two groups of data reached a record high, with an increase of 49.5% and 77.6%, respectively.

If the real estate market is a large external force, e-commerce will become a green channel for color TV sales. The online shopping whirlwind that began in the second half of 2012 continued to ferment in 2013, and the proportion of online channel sales in total sales increased step by step. According to AVC data, in June 2013, only the market share of color cables reached 15%, and the sales volume reached 330,000 units. At the same time, affected by the energy saving subsidy policy, sales on color cables showed a growth in blowout in the first half of the year, and the strong sales force of the online market created an additional increase for high-speed growth in the first half of the year. This is a unique landscape for the color TV market in 2013.

IT industry cross-border hits industry barriers are still high With the advancement of technology and the passage of time, regardless of the mobile phone, PC or television, the profits of its industrial chain are gradually shifted downwards from the upstream materials; in the mobile phone, PC and tablet After the computer, the TV as the fourth screen will certainly become the final battle for Internet companies. After two years of brewing, smart TVs have gradually shifted the main profit points to the nodes of the entire machine manufacturer to content applications. As an integral part of the four-screen integration, smart TV is becoming the focus of IT Internet vendors.

In this context, LeTV, iQiyi, Xiaomi, Lenovo and other manufacturers have entered the color TV industry, but their thinking and purpose are completely different. This reflects the collision of traditional manufacturing and Internet companies. The operating mode and logic of IT Internet companies are unfamiliar to traditional industries. IT and Internet companies entering the color TV industry will deepen the industry’s attention to content and applications. The “terminal+platform+content” model will become a measure of the company’s core competition. The important indicator of force.

As a traditional PC manufacturer, Lenovo is eager to find new business growth points. Following the mobile phone and tablet PC, Lenovo has entered the traditional TV manufacturing industry. In April 2012, Lenovo released the “four screens and one cloud” strategy, and television is one of them. Unlike companies such as LeTV and Xiaomi, the focus of Lenovo's advancement into the television field is still in the traditional terminal manufacturing, and TV is the way of thinking of the PC.

The core value of LeTV is always to acquire and accumulate copyright and use this as a starting point for strategic vertical integration. Go up to the content manufacturing industry and go down to the layout of the multi-screen terminal. Super TV is just a key link under this big framework. After five screens are linked, the advertising value is maximized, and it eventually reaches the accumulation from copyright accumulation to long-term users.

At the same time, Ovid Consulting (AVC) believes that Xiaomi’s entry into the television industry is based on Lei Jun’s existing resource system and the integration of resources at the company level. The expansion of software systems and Internet services to hardware terminals has formed Xiaomi’s mobile phone as the core. , multi-connected life, entertainment, work service network. The operation method is to import the existing mobile phone users into the TV users, realize the secondary user binding, and tap the user's consumption potential.

Although IT and Internet companies such as Lenovo and LeTV have entered the field of television terminal manufacturing, from the current perspective, the inherent industry barriers in the TV industry are still high, and Internet companies are more likely to enter television video content than to enter into hardware manufacturing. Into the content approach, seek cooperation with the radio and television enterprises and the whole machine, provide program content support and network playback technical support, network broadcast channel support, to achieve profit sharing.

The four major constraints of the rapid rise of UHD highlight the 2013 year. The biggest technology and product highlights of the color TV industry are highlighted in the rapid popularity of UHD (Ultra High Definition Television). The large-size OLED TVs that have been highly favored and have caused extensive discussion have been unable to break through due to mass production technology problems. This has led panel makers to collectively develop UHD LCD panels.

As of June 2013, according to AVC monitoring data, the penetration rate of UHD in LCD has reached 0.86%, and the penetration rate of 50+ size has reached 3.39%. It is worth noting that in the second quarter of the rise of UHD's two new sizes, the 39-inch and 55-inch market share has risen significantly, thanks to the expansion of upstream shipments and the continuous decline in terminal sales prices. Especially for the 55-inch UHD products, with the AUO and China Star Optronics mass-produced at 55 inches, the 55-inch sales price at the terminal is gradually lower.

However, industry insiders also expressed sober thinking about UHD before this hot spot. As a new type of display technology, UHD is mainly affected by mass production capacity and promotion attitude in the upstream and midstream during its development. At present, there are three main factors: First, the panel maker, second, the entire manufacturer, third, price, and fourth, source content.

First of all, there is a big difference in the attitude towards UHD panel supply. Innolux Taiwan actively promotes the development of UHD panels on the same size development. For Chinese manufacturers, China Star Optoelectronics has a relatively optimistic attitude. The 2013 target hit 8 to 90,000 pieces in a single month. BOE said it will continue to follow UHD R&D. In the case of Korean companies, Samsung and LG Korea Enterprises believe that the real change is in OLED technology and is relatively cautious about UHD.

Secondly, major domestic manufacturers have a strong sense of participation and are pushing forward. Among them, Skyworth will use UHD as the core of the annual promotion. It is extremely active in both the number and size of models. In the first half of the year, the market share has exceeded 40%. Hisense and TCL have all participated in market competitions by deploying various UHD products. Konka and Changhong entered the UHD TV market with concepts such as multi-core + UHD and living room TV. Foreign brands, LG and Samsung have few achievements.

Third, under the current technological background of mainstream LCD TVs, UHD is the peak of technology and the price is high. At present, UHD product prices will remain high for a long period of time. If only from the perspective of marketization, OVC Consulting (AVC) believes that the price difference between the new product with the same size and the existing LCD TV product is about 1.2 times, and the consumer acceptance is relatively high.

Finally, for the relatively weak content links, the entire machine manufacturers have used 2K to 4K technology to solve. However, in general, UHD related industrial chain still needs to be improved in the country, at least it needs a certain period of time to cultivate the market.

As the yield rate continues to increase, the panel bottleneck that will constrain the development of UHD in the future will be eliminated and prices will be closer to the people. At present, the yield of UHD panels is low and the supply is low. Unbalanced supply and demand eventually leads to high prices in the terminal market. Ovid Consulting (AVC) expects that the supply of 4K panels will exceed 400,000 in December 2013. With the gradual release of panel production capacity in the future, UHD product prices are expected to be close to the people, which will be of great help to the marketization of UHD.

In the second half of the year, TV sales or continued decline in energy-saving policies and the tightening of real estate policies have increased the likelihood of a slowdown in the growth of the TV market in the second half of 2013, and may even cause negative year-on-year growth in some quarters. Judging from the current market situation, from the beginning of the year to the present, the first half of the year underperformed by the advancement of subsidy policies and the promotion of manufacturers, and the demand for overdrafts in the first half of the year may cause sluggish growth in the second half of the year. The withdrawal of the two major support forces undoubtedly cast a shadow over the second half of the year. Since June, monetary policy tightening policy, bank money stocks fell sharply in the stock market, market confidence fell, consumption power is insufficient, it is even worse for the bleak market in the second half.

Despite the severe situation, the color TV market in 2013 still has bright spots. The rise of the online market has a far-reaching impact on the color TV market. The traditional peak TV sales seasons - the Yuanchun season, the May 1st season and the 11th peak season because of online promotions The influence of factors such as joining, stanza promotions, etc., is divided into 8 to 10 small unit battles. Although the traditional peak season still occupies most of the sales volume, the online sales promotion effect and segmentation effect on offline sales will gradually appear. For enterprises, it is necessary to make important adjustments in marketing and promotion in order to cope with the existing emerging channels of virtual networks.

In terms of policy implications, although there is no subsidy policy that can directly stimulate consumer demand, the two policies of terrestrial wave digital television policy and energy conservation leader system are still worthy of attention. Due to the influence of the digital television policy on terrestrial waves, product switching will be faced before and after the 11th.

The energy-saving subsidy policy will not be extended until the expiry date. The policy window period is from June to October. The new energy-saving leader system, in line with the GB24850-2013 standard, is highly likely to be implemented starting from October 1. Ovid Consulting (AVC) believes that the new system will focus on corporate reporting, and the declared products will be energy-saving products that can be demonstrated and realized. The auditing agency will focus on reviewing the reporting sales channels of participating companies and achieve traceability and supervision from production to sales.

According to AVC, ATV expects that TV sales in the country will reach 10.588 million units in the third quarter of 2013, a year-on-year decrease of 8.6%, and sales in the fourth quarter will reach 12.718 million units, down 2.8% year-on-year. However, due to the high growth in the first half of the year, the TV industry in 2013 will maintain a certain degree of growth.

Ovid Consulting (AVC) believes that domestic TV retail sales in 2013 will reach 46.31 million units, an increase of 9.1% year-on-year, of which, LCD TV domestic retail sales will reach 43.82 million units, an increase of 11.9%, plasma TV retail sales will reach 212 Million units, down 13.1% year-on-year, sales of CRT TV products continued to decline rapidly, and retail sales will reach 370,000 units, down 55.9% year-on-year. It is predicted that the sales volume of domestic 3D flat-panel TVs is expected to reach 20.3 million units in the whole year, 44% in flat-panel TVs, 18.4 million in LCD 3D TVs, and penetration rate is expected to reach 42%. The retail sales of smart TVs for the year were 24.22 million units, accounting for 52% of the flat-panel TV retail sales, of which, 23.32 million were LCD TVs, and the penetration rate was 53%.

Overall, 2013 is a key year for China's color TV industry to continue its higher-level restructuring and transformation and upgrading. The opportunities for market growth will mainly focus on technological upgrading: including the development of new technologies such as UHD, smart TVs, and the growth of online markets and rural markets. How to better grasp the opportunities for market growth, put forward higher requirements for the integration of resources and refined management of enterprises, closely follow the pulse of the industry development, strengthen their own strength, in order to be in an invincible position.