Don't blame young people for the sluggish TV sales.
In August 2026, China's TV complete machine shipment reached 24.08 million units, down 3.3% year-on-year and up 30.2% month-on-month compared with July.
In the same period, the global TV market shipped 47.12 million units in the first quarter, hitting the highest level in the same period since 2020. Under these two figures, the division of the TV industry becomes clear: China is clearing out old production capacity while the whole world is re-evaluating the value of large screens.
It is obviously impossible to explain this situation by simply attributing the declining sales volume to the fact that young people do not watch TV, or purely to short video platforms.
Data from Luo Tu Technology shows that in the first 8 months of 2026, China's cumulative shipment of complete TV sets reached 19.205 million units, down 8.4% year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2026, the shipment was 8.065 million units, down 8.8% year-on-year; the retail volume was 6.4 million units, down 11.4% year-on-year; the retail sales reached 25.9 billion yuan, down 6.8% year-on-year.
In 2025, China's color TV retail volume fell to 27.63 million units, the lowest level in nearly a decade, more than 23 million units less than the peak of 50.89 million units ten years ago.
This decline range is indeed very drastic.
However, the global market has not collapsed simultaneously. Data from TrendForce shows that global TV shipments reached 47.12 million units in the first quarter of 2026, with Samsung accounting for 19.1% of the market share, TCL 16.3%, Hisense 15.1%, LG 5.7 million units, and Xiaomi 2.02 million units, down 22% year-on-year. TCL saw the fastest growth, up 11.3% year-on-year.
The full-year global shipment is expected to reach 194.2 million units, a slight year-on-year decrease of 1%.
Behind this "slight decline" lies the drastic differentiation between regions and product categories.
Moreover, differentiation also exists within the Chinese market.
In August 2026, the top 8 brands shipped about 2.3 million units, down 1.0% year-on-year, with a combined market share of 95.7%.
The combined shipment of the three traditional leading brands Hisense, Skyworth and TCL reached about 1.49 million units, rising against the trend by 1.4% year-on-year, with a market share of 61.9%.
Xiaomi (including Redmi) shipped about 450,000 units, with a market share of 18.7%.
The combined shipment of Changhong, KONKA and Haier reached about 320,000 units, down 5.1% year-on-year, with a market share of 13.1%. Huawei shipped about 50,000 units, down 10.9% year-on-year.
Foreign brands: Samsung withdrew from the Chinese market in May, and the combined shipments of Sony, Philips and Sharp in August were less than 50,000 units.
These figures indicate that China's TV market has entered the stage of oligarchic involution.
The top 8 brands take 95.7% of the market share, leaving very little remaining space.
KONKA officially announced its plan to voluntarily delist, and Samsung withdrew from the Chinese mainland, which are footnotes of this stage. The total market volume is shrinking, leading brands rely on scale and sub-brands to hold their basic market, and small and medium brands are squeezed out. This is not healthy concentration, in my opinion, it is brutal elimination in the stock market.
Moreover, there are also great changes in the product structure.
In the first quarter of 2026, the retail volume and retail sales of Mini LED TVs increased by 21.1% and 30.4% year-on-year respectively, and the full-year figure is expected to reach 11.15 million units, up 39.0% year-on-year. The global shipment of RGB-Mini LED TVs is expected to soar to 500,000 units.
Data from Omdia shows that OLED TV shipments reached 2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2024, hitting a quarterly high, up 12.6% year-on-year. Shipments of TVs of 80 inches and above increased by 24.5% year-on-year, becoming the fastest-growing market segment in North America.
The average price of 98-inch and 100-inch LCD TVs in the United States is about 1500 US dollars, and the price improvement drives demand.
Therefore, the real trend of China's TV sales is that the total volume is going down while the structure is upgrading.
Low-end small screens are being cleared out, while high-end large screens are growing; complete machine brands are struggling to survive, while the upstream panels, memory and Mini LED chips are benefiting; China's local market is shrinking while overseas markets are expanding.
Why is it so difficult to sell?
It is so difficult to sell TVs, the first reason is that the shared attention of families has been deconstructed.
In the past, TV was the only public screen in the living room, and the whole family needed to make decisions and watch programs together. Now mobile phones, tablets, earphones and game consoles pull everyone into their private algorithm streams.
One person is scrolling short videos, one is watching live streams, one is playing games, and the TV being turned on only serves as background sound.
According to the survey of AVC, 90% of enterprises' marketing investment is spent on "which brand of TV to buy", and only 10% is invested in "why to buy a TV and why to watch TV".
The essence of this problem is that the transaction cost is too high.
You need to buy a membership to watch videos, and the membership for TV terminals is not universal for mobile terminals; the picture definition is not enough, even 720P or 480P; there are too many advertisements and the operation is complicated; the film and television content is limited, and the content you want to watch cannot be found.
Zhang Shuai, an employee of KONKA, said that he is a football fan, but he has little desire to watch the World Cup on TV. After having a child, the TV cabinet in the living room was converted into a bookcase, leaving only a small TV in the bedroom, which is turned on three or four times a year. He uses mobile phones and tablets to watch videos, and the TV requires an additional membership which is not universal with that of mobile phones and tablets, which is too troublesome.
This experience actually represents the status quo of many families.
The accumulation of these frictions is demand suppression. In economics, transaction costs will directly reduce the willingness to trade. The sum of TV's boot cost, search cost, membership cost and advertisement time cost makes many people choose to give up. Mobile phones and tablets provide lower transaction costs, more personalized recommendations and more fragmented satisfaction. If TV cannot provide absolute incremental value in experience, consumers will naturally vote with their feet.
The second reason is the insufficient increment of product value.
A person in charge of the channel of a certain brand said that it is not that young people do not love watching TV, but that the products do not make them feel absolute incremental value. Now most brands still define demand by price, but the real target should be those high-net-worth groups.
Young people also have such consumption thinking: they are willing to pay for high-quality display, but refuse to pay for low-quality experience.
Samsung's market share in China is only 3.62%, but after the official announcement of its withdrawal, the transaction volume of Samsung TVs on JD increased by more than 200% year-on-year, products in offline stores were snapped up, and some products even saw price increases.
This shows that demand exists, but there is a mismatch in supply.
The third reason is the reversal of the cost cycle.
The demand for AI servers has snatched the production capacity of DRAM and NAND, and the cost of TV memory has soared. TrendForce pointed out that in the first quarter of 2026, the proportion of memory in the production cost of 32-inch TVs rose from 6%-7% to 15%, and that of 65-inch TVs rose from 2%-3% to 10%.
The shipment of 32-inch TVs is expected to drop by 9.1% for the whole year, and its proportion will shrink to 19%.
Brands' advance stocking pushed up the global shipment in Q1, but the terminal price increase suppressed demand.
This is the industry stagflation where cost-push inflation coexists with weak demand. Panels already account for 40%-50% of TV production costs, and the share of memory has risen sharply. Brands can no longer absorb costs through deep promotions.
The fourth reason is the subsidy decline and demand overdraft. From the launch of the national subsidy in 2024 to the first quarter of 2026, China's TV market only saw year-on-year growth in shipments for two quarters.
Subsidies pull future demand to the present in advance, leaving the market exposed after the subsidies are reduced.
The total retail volume of the 618 shopping festival in 2026 is expected to drop by about 10% year-on-year. Policies can save the market for a while, but cannot save the product definition. When the subsidies disappear, consumers' willingness to buy will naturally decline in the face of rising prices and poor experience.
The fifth reason is geopolitics and trust costs. The Texas Attorney General sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL, accusing that the ACR technology takes a screenshot every 500 milliseconds for targeted advertising.
Samsung reached a settlement in February 2026, while Hisense and TCL are still in the litigation, and face relevant accusations involving China's National Security Law.
This means that for Chinese brands going global, it is not only a battle of price and channels, but also a battle of data sovereignty, privacy compliance and political trust.
This is not a trivial matter, it is the admission ticket for future globalization.
Once the trust cost rises, the difficulty and cost of overseas expansion will increase.
Through these reasons, we clearly know why it is so difficult to sell TVs. Young people are the last group that should be blamed for this. The industry in particular needs to reflect on whether every new product launched has understood the needs of young people, and whether it has solved the frictions in real scenarios. If these problems cannot be solved, the difficulty will only become more and more insurmountable.
TV needs to prove its usefulness again
As we all know, TV has experienced two definitions: the first one is broadcast receiver, and the second one is intelligent display terminal.
In the AI era, it is being defined for the third time.
This definition is generally moving towards the direction of family AI hub, even family edge computing server.
Why? Because it has a realistic foundation.
TV is often powered on, with a large screen, shared by multiple people, located in the center of the living room, and can be equipped with cameras, microphones and sensors. End-side AI is more suitable for TV than cloud AI, such as local inference, privacy computing, low latency and multi-modal interaction.
Samsung exhibited Micro RGB TVs at IFA 2026, with the full series equipped with VAC end-side AI agents; Hisense exhibited the pre-research prototype of sequential display; TCL exhibited X11L SQD-Mini LED and printed OLED; LG showed WOLED evo.
The direction is like this: large screens are transforming from a single display device to an AI home interaction hub.
But the key to winning the AI TV market does not lie in adding a voice assistant. At least four things need to be truly solved.
First, aggregate content across platforms, break the membership wall and reduce transaction costs. Users do not want to switch back and forth between multiple apps, and do not want to buy membership twice for the same drama. If TV can realize unified search, unified playback and unified payment, its value will be greatly improved.
Second, process privacy locally and establish a transparent consent mechanism. The ACR lawsuit has sounded the alarm. Users need to know what data is collected, for what purpose, and how to turn it off. Without trust, the stronger the AI function is, the more scared users will be.
Third, seamlessly collaborate with mobile phones, tablets, PCs and smart home devices. TV should become the control center of the home device network, rather than an isolated screen. Users can continue the video they were watching on their mobile phones on TV, can use TV to control lights, air conditioners and security systems, and can use TV to hold video conferences.
Fourth, create new scenarios: games, fitness, education, AI companionship, home office and giant screen cinema. TV needs to prove its usefulness again. If it only amplifies the content on mobile phones, its value is limited. If it can provide immersive experience and multi-person interaction that mobile phones cannot achieve, demand will come back.
In terms of technical routes, Mini LED is the mid-term profit battlefield. TrendForce predicts that global Mini LED shipments will reach 24.9 million units in 2026, up 87% year-on-year, and the penetration rate will break through 10% for the first time.
TCL, Hisense and Xiaomi account for 54% of Mini LED shipments. Samsung is promoting entry-level Mini LED products and is expected to recapture about 30% of the market share.
RGB-Mini LED, SQD-Mini LED, printed OLED, Micro RGB and WOLED evo are all competing for the blank area between high-end LCD and OLED.
65-inch and 75-inch products become the main promotion targets, and products of 65 inches and above account for nearly 25% of global shipments.
The average price of 98-inch and 100-inch TVs in North America is about 1500 US dollars, and the price improvement drives the shipments of TVs above 80 inches to increase by 24.5% year-on-year.
Behind these technology competitions, the TV industry is looking for new value anchors.
In the past, TV relied on the upgrading of size and resolution, now it relies on Mini LED, OLED, AI interaction and scenario innovation. Therefore, to a certain extent, brands that can integrate picture quality, content, interaction, privacy and ecology can gain a firm foothold in the high-end market.
In the AI era, TVs will not disappear, but will be stratified. Low-end TVs will become large-size displays on the wall, with continuous price wars and meager profits; high-end TVs will become living room AI servers, carrying the functions of home entertainment, office, education and control hub; as for the mid-tier brands, most of them will be cleared out.
Chinese brands' opportunities lie in the global market, but their moat is not price, but trust, ecology and the right to define scenarios.
Trust determines the ceiling
From the perspective of the industrial chain, TV complete machine is a link with low gross profit, strong cyclicality and diseconomies of scale.
The top 8 brands occupy 95.7% of the market share, which is not healthy concentration, but oligarchic involution.
KONKA's delisting, Samsung's withdrawal from China, Huawei's monthly shipment of about 50,000 units, and the marginalization of foreign brands indicate that brands without scale will die, and brands with scale also find it difficult to make money.
Profits are transferring to upstream panels, memory, Mini LED chips, AI SoCs and content platforms.
Data from TrendForce shows that global TV shipments reached 47.12 million units in the first quarter of 2026, but the growth was driven by brands' advance stocking rather than strong terminal demand. The proportion of memory in the production cost of 32-inch TVs rose from 6%-7% to 15%, and that of 65-inch TVs rose from 2%-3% to 10%. Panels already account for 40%-50% of TV production costs.
Brands can no longer absorb costs through promotional discounts, and retail prices are likely to rise.
For consumers, if they delay purchase for several months, the price may be higher. For complete machine brands, cost pressure will accelerate the market clearance.
In terms of investment, the valuation of TV complete machine brands should not only depend on shipment volume, but also must refer to their high-end overseas market share, AI service ARPU, and data advertising subscription monetization.
However, ACR