Japan's color TV business continues to "downsizing"

Toshiba’s color TV business continues to “slim down” and strives to turn around in the second half of fiscal 2013. While preparing to transfer the Polish LCD TV production plant, Toshiba’s color power plant in Dalian will be discontinued at the end of December 2013. Accordingly, Dalian Toshiba Television Co., Ltd. (DLTV) will also cease operations at that time. In the future, the models supplied by DLTV to supply the Japanese market will be gradually converted to OEM production, while the products supplied to the Chinese market will be produced in cooperation with Chinese domestic companies. Toshiba (China) Public Relations Department official told reporters yesterday (December 1) that the specific situation is not clear, and stressed that the Toshiba color TV business in the Chinese market is not affected.

In September of this year, Toshiba announced that it will consolidate three overseas TV factories into one. Since China and Poland will be closed down and sold, Toshiba will have only Indonesian television factories after 2014.

According to sources, Toshiba Dalian Plant produced 700,000 to 800,000 TV sets in 2012. An informed source told this reporter that Toshiba will certainly not give up the Chinese color TV market. Since 2010, Toshiba’s color TVs sold in China have been commissioned by TCL, and its sales business has been operated by a joint venture between Toshiba and TCL.

In addition to the suspension of production at the Dalian TV plant in China, Toshiba announced in October that it plans to set a price of US$25 million for the sale of Toshiba TV China Europe Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned LCD TV subsidiary in Poland. In the first quarter of 2014, the transaction will be completed. Toshiba’s future LCD TVs that supply the European market will be commissioned by Compal Electronics.

According to Toshiba’s previous announcement, the overseas production commission rate of Toshiba’s video business will increase from the current 40% to 70% in 2014. At the same time, Toshiba will also integrate video services with home appliance companies and form a new subsidiary, Toshiba Consumer Electronics, which is expected to be established in the second half of fiscal 2013.

Due to the deteriorating market environment, Toshiba LCD TVs have been operating in deficit for two consecutive years. As of the end of September this year, in the first half of fiscal year 2013, Toshiba’s TV business lost more than 10 billion yen. In fiscal 2012, Toshiba’s total revenue was 580.33 billion yen, of which household appliances revenue was 591.5 billion yen, accounting for only 10%; and infrastructure revenue was 2.5642 billion yen, accounting for more than 40%; digital products, electronic components The proportion of income was 24.7% and 23% respectively.

"The color TV business of Japanese companies is shrinking." Zhang Bing, research director of Display Search in China, analyzed the newspaper and said that they all use a "slimming" approach to boost profits. It is hoped that through the "light assetization" of color TV business, it will turn to commissioning manufacturing to achieve profitability.

Panasonic will stop the production of plasma panels and plasma TVs by the end of this year and early next year. Sony has already withdrawn from the liquid crystal panel project with Samsung. The color TV business will be "looking for profits" this year and will strive to turn a loss; Sharp will also have 10 LCD panels. 37.6% of the company's shares and half of its production capacity were transferred to Hon Hai.

Zhang Bing said that since the beginning of this year, the share of Japanese brands in the global TV market has continued to decline, but the rate of decline has slowed. Japanese companies have accumulated technology in 4K (ultra HD) and OLED, but it is not easy to reverse the trend. As color TVs play an important role in the future of smart homes, Japanese brands will not easily give up the TV market.