China Has Seized Sony's Television Halo (ft.com) 70
Sony announced last month that it plans to pass control of its home entertainment division -- including the two-decade-old Bravia television brand -- to Chinese electronics group TCL through a joint venture in which TCL would hold a 51% stake. The Japanese company was long ago overtaken in sales by South Korea's Samsung and LG and now holds just 2% of the global television market. Sony stopped making its own LCD screens in 2011.
Chinese companies supplied 71% of television panels made in Asia last year, according to TCL, and less than 10% are now produced in Japan and Korea. TCL is close to overtaking Samsung as the world's largest television maker. Sony retains valuable intellectual property in image rendering, and the Bravia brand still carries consumer recognition, but its OLED screens are already supplied by Samsung and LG. The company has been shifting toward premium cameras, professional audio, and its entertainment businesses in film, music, and games -- areas where intellectual property is less exposed to Chinese manufacturing scale.
Chinese companies supplied 71% of television panels made in Asia last year, according to TCL, and less than 10% are now produced in Japan and Korea. TCL is close to overtaking Samsung as the world's largest television maker. Sony retains valuable intellectual property in image rendering, and the Bravia brand still carries consumer recognition, but its OLED screens are already supplied by Samsung and LG. The company has been shifting toward premium cameras, professional audio, and its entertainment businesses in film, music, and games -- areas where intellectual property is less exposed to Chinese manufacturing scale.
Hyperbole (Score:4, Insightful)
"Seized"
Hyperbole much?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They're Chinese, they literally snatched the literal halo and ran off with it to make a knock-off copy. Literally.
I expect this will end up like IBM selling their laptop brand to Lenovo: the Chinese company milks the brand name for a bit but cannot sustain the quality that earned the reputation, and you get Chinese spyware to boot. TFS admits that the Korean companies are the actual market leaders now, the lede is just more pro-CCP Slashvertising.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the ThinkPad line has pretty much sustained the quality from IBM days, yes the non-Thinkpad stuff is frequently junk, but then again before IBM sold it off the desktops were not-so-affectionately nicknamed Craptiva, so IBM was no stranger to slumming it to try to get share, but Lenovo was more aggressive about it. So yes, the Lenovo at the local best buy is probably crap, but the ThinkPad line is pretty much intact. At least insofar as any of the brands are intact, keyboards across the board have opted to be a little worse for the sake of looking more appealing and accommodating thinner form factors.
Similarly, the biggest security controversy were on the non-Thinkpad lines. The 'Superfish' fiasco that every keeps citing was actually a US company using an Israeli SSL hijacker, so Lenovo screwed up by bundling the wrong crapware, which is terrible, but far from unique given the penchant for vendors to take all sorts of dubious comers. The good news being after Superfish, I think the whole industry was a bit more careful about the crapware they bundle.
Re: Hyperbole (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
IBM did very well when it made the Thinkpads. The butterfly keyboard, ease of getting to components like RAM or the hard drive, and the really nice docking stations, which could give a laptop a full PCI bus, multiple hard drives, NICs, and many other desktop features by just a simple click on the dock. Those are the things I miss, especially when bringing a laptop back and forth to work, where all I needed to do was slip the laptop in the dock, and be ready to go. Dell also did a great job with their doc
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
They're Chinese, they literally snatched the literal halo and ran off with it to make a knock-off copy. Literally.
This. Sony has nothing of value, (since when has China ever cared about IP?), TCL now owns their branding and makes the sets. Sony has effectively exited the TV market, and the article is delusional if they think Sony has any remaining value there.
If you see a "Sony" TV in a store from now on, remember: It's Chinese.
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, Chinese might be better than Sony. They sold their souls so long ago that I can't remember the last of their products I bought. Once upon a time they had a name for quality, but then they sold their soul to Hollywood.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Their OLED Bravia "master" line of TVs are actually really nice. They edge out LG in picture quality due to a superior image processing pipeline, and the fit and finish is a little better, IMO. You pay through the nose for it though. Hopefully that secret sauce went over to TCL with the sale of the brand.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I recently donated to Goodwill (December 2025) a Sony Bravia TV from the mid-2000s that still worked well (40", 16x9 format, ATSC, 1080p). .
Which reminds me I gave my mid-2000s Samsung 40" 1080p LCD to my mum to use about 15 years ago, and it's still working as well as the day I bought it.
Meanwhile my much newer Sony 65" has a bright red vertical line about a foot in from the left side. Everything else is fine so it's in the games room now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You misunderstood me. It was Sony I've been avoiding.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sony has changed, and I'd probably say not for the better. Their heavily DRM-ed "mp3 players" at the turn of the century with their OpenMG app sucked, but on the other hand, as players, they were awesome, highly ergonomic, and lasted a long time per charge. They made a lot of very nice devices.
Heck, companies are trying to duplicate how the Walkman handles cassette tapes, and can't do that... and that is 40+ year old tech.
Sony also had a solid, multi-terabyte optical archiving format. Not cheap, but when
Re: Hyperbole (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Have you been paying attention to what China has tried to do with rare earth minerals?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Rare earths are an interesting one. They gave a lot of hints about Trump knocking off the bullshit, or they would constrain the supply of them to the US in response. Trump didn't knock it off, and they did. Hard to blame them for issuing a clear warning over many years, and finally following through on it when it was ignored.
If there is a cold war, it's because the US seem to want one. Conservatives there need a Big Bad to justify what they are doing. Meanwhile the rest of the world is on-board with some of
Re: (Score:2)
Spend more time reading history. It's not about Trump.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The first paragraph actually explains all this stupidity:
From 2000 to 2009, China's production of rare earth elements increased 77 percent to 129,000 tons, while production from other reserves dropped to around 3000 tons.[5] Large US mining companies such as Molycorp closed due to the mix of China's abundance of rare earths and their capacities for production, as well as the cost of labor and stringent environmental regulations during the Nixon era.[6] With the decreased pool of competitors, China's hold on these elements gave them a lot of power in the distribution of these commodities. The government declared these elements to be a protected and strategic good in 1990.[5] This decision had a significant impact on foreign industries who partnered with China. Foreign investors could no longer work with rare earths except when partnered with Chinese firms.[5] The State Development and Planning Commission gained power, as all projects needed their approval.[5] Production quotas were instigated for the miners and oftentimes quotas would be surpassed because of illegal mining by people who did not have licenses.[5]
In other words, China just has more of them, and especially in the 90s the environmental regulations were more lax, and the US didn't think them strategic enough to bother protecting the industry. China did though, they made sure that they were not pillaged like other countries had been by foreign companies coming in.
Re: (Score:2)
China did though, they made sure that they were not pillaged like other countries had been by foreign companies coming in.
Are you intentionally misreading the Wikipedia article?
Re:Hyperbole (Score:5, Insightful)
So yes, the average American has a reason to hate China. China literally took their jobs, and they've never recovered from it. Worse, the "global market" means that any attempt to revive the dead industry in the US will always be out gunned. The average American has been forced to pay the thieves for everything ever since, and anyone who's tried to make a new product in the US has had to deal with never-ending hordes of Chinese knock-offs appearing on Amazon the second they get an initial manufacturing quote.
Globalization was a mistake, and the reason China made that threat isn't because of the asshole in the White House throwing a temper-tantrum. That was just a good PR excuse. The real reason is because China now has a similar problem to the US circa 1980. Their standard of living has gotten too high for the global owner class' tastes and they are at risk of losing their manufacturing base to other countries. (Malaysia, etc.) So much to the point that the CCP is now trying to ban high level workers from leaving the country to train their replacements. (Because China knows how this works out, having been a previous beneficiary.) China doesn't want to speedrun the US's downfall, and the CCP has no intention of being replaced. They might make a good show of being "cooperative" in the short term, but long term, they'll be forced to compete against cheaper countries, will suffer industry losses and currency inflation, and will gradually follow the same path as the US. Becoming "hostile" towards other countries as they work towards insulating themselves from the global market's whims.
Meanwhile the rest of the world is on-board with some of what China is doing, especially the stuff that cuts the US out of things like international banking
As if China won't follow the same playbook? They've already done the rare earths bit, and as you've alluded to, want to axe the US out completely. What makes you think they'll stop at just the US? It's a powerful weapon. There will be immense internal pressure to use it with or without permission from the rest of the world. Europe's preferences be dammed. Note: The same would apply to the Europeans, or anyone else, given that power. It allows collapsing a country you don't like without firing a single bullet. No country is immune to that temptation.
If there is a cold war, it's because the US seem to want one.
The average American in fact does not want a war, but that matters very little given the massively corrupt government that they have. Their government represents them in name only. (Unless they just so happen to be the small, loud, fraction of them that actively supports pedos.)
Conservatives there need a Big Bad to justify what they are doing.
Conservatives need nothing. They've had something to legitimately rail against ever since the owner class shipped all of their jobs to China. The problem is the owner class, who's convinced them that immigrants, LBTQ, etc. are responsible for it, instead of the owner class wanting to take more of their money. The Conservative's politicians, need no justification either. Might makes right is their justification. As they've already demonstrated with C-COT, killing Americans for protesting, terrorizing progressive cities, withholding congressionally mandated funds, blatantly defying court orders, threatening nationalization of elections, etc.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
It's not really China's fault that jobs moved there. It wasn't just undercutting wages either, they built unrivalled manufacturing supply chains and support. If I want a complex PCB prototyped here, I get quotes for 6 week as an expensive rush job. Chinese manufacturers quote 6 days, including airmail to my door.
If anyone is to blame, it's the wealthy who screwed up our economies to suit themselves. Productivity gains were not passed on to workers. Socialism was treated as a dirty word, taking away cheaper
Re: (Score:2)
If there is a Cold War, it's b'cos China, under Xi (they were somewhat okay under Xhao Jiang and Hu Jintao) has decided to pick up the baton of the leadership of the communist world, and pick up where the Soviets left off in 1990. As Gordon Chang pointed out, President Xi believes in 2 things - he's a true believer in Maoist doctrine, and he also believes in the middle kingdom's ideology of Tianxia - or "all under heaven". The latter is an ideology in which the Chinese emperor (or party chairman in this c
Re: (Score:2)
China isn't communist.
Re: (Score:2)
China isn't communist.
They are led by the communist party.
They were moving away from communism for a long time, doing things like privatizing land and allowing capitalists into the communist party.
But since Xi, they've turned back towards communism, arresting the capitalists and following "Xi Jinping thought," which is "communism with Chinese characteristics." You can read about it on Wikipedia (and other places, but Wikipedia has a good summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't democratic either. Shocking, I know, but it turns out that names don't mean much in politics.
I hesitate to make comparisons, but if pushed I'd say China is probably closer to the EU model, particularly the Nordics. Strong regulation of capitalism, state ownership where it makes sense.
Re: (Score:2)
I hesitate to make comparisons, but if pushed I'd say China
You should hesitate, because you don't have the required knowledge to make a comparison.
Learn Xi Jinping thought to level up your knowledget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, while the Communist Party still runs China, and President Xi, unlike his predecessors, is a true Maoist, the economy China has is a fascist economy. One where corporations do control the means of production, but the government still gets to tell them how much to produce. Oh, and Beijing has a law that all Chinese companies must co-operate w/ the PLA in modernizing it. No such equivalent is there in the West: if a company refuses to support the US Army, or say, ICE, it doesn't lose its license.
Re: (Score:2)
Really, is that why they produced too much real estate and the government had to step in with new financial rules?
Where does this nonsense come from?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually no. Viktor Orban's policy of opposing muslim immigration into his country was not pushed by the Kremlin. It's something he observed looking at other European countries, and decided that Hungary would not tolerate it. Even if it got him into trouble w/ the EU. Then there is his friendship w/ Israel, which is completely opposite that of Putin, who has been backing Israel's enemies
As for the tired canard about Trump being Putin's stooge, had that been the case, Putin would have ended the war in
Re: Hyperbole (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Hyperbole (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Otherwise you'll sound like an ignorant useful idiot.
Re: Hyperbole (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Can't seize what was willingly given away. (Score:3)
Can't seize what was willingly given away.
Sony chose to give up the market to others.
So did Panasonic
Sad to see, but as they say, "all good things.."
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My teenager prefers to watch any videos on his phone as opposed to the 56" 4k on the wall.
We are moving from a 'home theater' experience to a more personal experience for video - and higher resolutions are not required nor desired for those viewing mechanisms.
TVs are dead, and Sony knows it.
Poor old Sony (Score:2)
Thought they could drop the quality and people would still keep buying simply because of the brand name. Shame no one told them that the world doesn't work like that any more (except maybe in high fashion but those people are just morons anyway).
Re: Poor old Sony (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What I think he was saying, although it's hard to be sure, is that Sony already dropped quality.
Re: (Score:3)
Sony hwardware started losing quality against other japanese brands - never mind the koreans - about 25 years ago when chinese electronics were still domestic market cheap shit only.
Re: (Score:2)
In the 1950s-1970s there were USA and European brands that were quality brands and Japanese brands were the cheaper option. In some cases the European brand started to outsource production in Japan, and in some cases started to rebrand products made in Japan. Japan then started to make high quality stuff and sold them with their own brand.
The same cycle happened wit Korean firms and in some cases with Taiwanese and Hong Kong bra
Re: (Score:2)
Thought they could drop the quality and people would still keep buying simply because of the brand name. Shame no one told them that the world doesn't work like that any more (except maybe in high fashion but those people are just morons anyway).
Sony wasn't particularly good in quality to begin with... See: the Sony Timer. It just had a brand following which it's been shedding year after year.
Quality wise, the Koreans came in and ate their lunch, price wise the Chinese are eating everyone else's lunch.
Re: (Score:2)
"Sony wasn't particularly good in quality to begin with"
I guess you weren't around in the 80s or were young because Sony hifi back then was top notch and it stayed that way until the early 2000s. Then it was downhill fast.
Halo? (Score:2)
Since Sony owns Bungie now, I thought this was an oblique way of saying that China had seized ownership of them! (Yes I know MS retains ownership of Halo, but still)
Well (Score:1)