Craze that Chinese TV manufacturers such as TCL, Haier, and Xiaomi brought last year has become very quiet. As consumers start to avoid from purchasing Chinese TVs, offline sales of Chinese TVs with large distributors at the center are starting to decrease.
According to this industry on the 5th, sales of Chinese TVs are making slow progress recently as Chinese TVs fall behind of TVs from Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and other small and medium South Korean TV manufacturers. Lotte Hi-Mart recently moved most of TCL’s TVs, which were sold at offline stores, to online sales channels and has decided to sell all new TVs that were released this year online only. It also excluded one lineup out of three lineups of Haier’s TVs from its offline stores.
Although TCL was the driving force of this craze as its early supply of 2,000 TVs were sold out in just two weeks in early last year, its sales have begun to drop over time.
Hi-Mart recently changed stands for TVs entirely by having some products from small and medium companies on display while showing Chinese TVs through online only.
“Although there is no change in lineups, we changed and are operating sales channels in order to vitalize omni-channel, which is one of the major businesses that Lotte Group is pushing for.” said a representative for Lotte Hi-Mart. “Sales of Chinese TVs are repeating increase and reduction per month.”
Not only are offline stores with South Korean products but online stores are also filled mostly by South Korean products from Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and small and medium companies. According to Danawa’s statistics, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics were the top sellers for lineups of UHD TV, full HD TV, and HD TV in last year and small and medium companies such as WasabiMango, AlphaScan, and Daewoo Lucoms filled rest of rankings.
TV industries are seeing images of Chinese brands as the major factor why this craze has become very quiet. Although TCL, Haier, and Xiaomi all are businesses that have influences, their level of recognition in TV industries fall way behind of Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. Also it is not easy for them to compete with reasonable price compared to performance when small and medium companies in South Korea are fighting back with ultra-low-priced products.
Fact that sales of Xiaomi’s TVs have become foundered has also caused this craze to become very quiet. Although Xiaomi planned to release its products in South Korea in last September, it could not continue craze of Chinese TVs as release of its products has been delayed repeatedly. It is heard that Xiaomi decided not to release its products in South Korea while it was planning to release its products in South Korea by believing that there is no business value in releasing its products in South Korea.
Staff Reporter Jung, Youngil | [email protected]
