Blasé Capital BRAVO TCL
Sony’s decision to hand over a majority control of its TV and home-audio hardware business to China’s TCL is being read as a standalone corporate move. But the acquisition sits inside a longer arc, which is the steady unbundling of “home entertainment” into two separate and different businesses. The first is the high-margin one, where brands compete on picture processing, audio tuning, premium perception, ecosystems, and content adjacencies. The other is the industrial layer where winners are decided by panel supply, factory scale, logistics, working capital discipline, and the ability to keep prices sharp and costs in control, while funding R&D.
Sony seems to have conceded that the second option is for players like TCL. The sale structure seems clear. Sony and TCL will form a joint venture to “assume Sony’s home entertainment business.” TCL will own 51 per cent in the new venture, and Sony 49 per cent. The new company will handle the entire global chain, from product development and design to manufacturing, sales, logistics, and customer service. It will use the Sony and Bravia branding.
While experts may see the structure from a lens of outsourcing, this is Sony’s acceptance that the operational core of the TV hardware business is a scale game, and it no longer wants to be a lead operator. In the JV, Sony will contribute image and audio processing strengths, and brand value. TCL brings in “advanced display technology,” supply chain control, market reach, and cost efficiency. In essence, the TV market’s centre has decisively moved towards China. In 2024, TCL’s Mini LED TV global market share rose to almost 29 per cent, ranking it first. In 2025, the company said the global shipment share was 28.7 per cent in the first half of the year.
Omdia data adds context. TCL’s TV shipments rose 14.8 per cent year-on-year in 2024, taking its market share to 13.9 per cent, and placing it among the top two global TV brands. TCL’s 2024 annual report frames its strategy as “mid-to-high-end + large screen.” If you want an answer to “why Sony, why now,” it is that Sony is a premium brand in an era when premium was redefined by scale. Scale is in the grasp of the Chinese. In Q4-24, Counterpoint Research stated that the global premium TV market grew 51 per cent. While Samsung led with 16 per cent share, TCL’s share was 14 per cent.
This is where the Japan versus South Korea versus China narrative is not about “failure,” but operating models. South Korean firms behave like platform ones that happen to sell hardware. LG reported 2025 revenues of more than INR5.5 lakh crore, with operating profit of over 15,000 crore. It emphasised a pivot toward “qualitative growth,” and platform-based services. It indicates a map of how the Koreans insulated themselves from the harshest parts of TV hardware economics to build scale, and monetise the OS layer and services.
China’s approach is different. It focuses on vertical manufacturing, panel ecosystem strength, and a willingness to treat the mid-range as a battlefield to win volumes and mindshare, and then use technologies to climb upward. Japan’s heritage was built when differentiation was tightly coupled to proprietary engineering, and manufacturing. The playbook weakened where core components are commoditised, and supply chain leverage determines pricing. Japan’s last decade of TV history shows this shift in ownership and control. Sharp, once synonymous with display innovation, was acquired by Foxconn in 2016, giving the contract manufacturing giant access to advanced screen technology and pricing power for major clients.
Toshiba’s TV business was sold to China’s Hisense in 2017, and the latter planned to acquire a 95 per cent in Toshiba Visual Solutions. Japan, which invented modern TV, ceded control of scale economics to Chinese brands or China-linked industrial groups. Sony’s TCL move fits in with Sony’s broader corporate drift away from being an “electronics company” in the old sense. A media report described Sony as focused on entertainment over traditional electronics, and noted its plans to spin off most of its financial services unit. A later report framed Sony’s profit story around entertainment and chips.
This is where expectations collide with reality. Japan is strong in robotics and industrial automation, so it is natural to ask why Japanese consumer-tech brands did not translate this edge into the “AI era” of TVs. The simple answer is that TV AI is not robotics. It is a mix of on-device video processing, recommendation systems, voice assistants, OS ecosystems, and data-driven services. These advantages scale with software platforms, cloud partnerships, data access, and the ability to monetise attention. This is why LG talks about webOS installed base, and services growth, and why the battleground for “smart TV” looks like ad-tech and platform leverage.
What does the Sony-TCL shift mean for consumers? Immediately, not much changes because the arrangement is nonbinding, and the new operations are expected in April 2027. But the long-term implications are structural. Sony’s differentiation is likely to be more software-defined, leaning on picture and audio processing, calibration, motion handling, and the brand’s premium “signature.” TCL’s scale reshapes cost structures, and model mix decisions underneath. The optimistic scenario is better value in the “affordable premium” tiers because TCL’s supply chain and manufacturing efficiencies are what Sony is buying into. The risk scenario is brand dilution.
