Laser TV goes a step further and we must make three breakthroughs!

In the first half of 2017, the sales volume of laser TVs increased by 235%, becoming the championship in sales growth of TV products. This is a good result, but it is not a worry-free result: because of the total amount, laser television is still in the "embryonic" stage.

What should be the goal of laser television

Compared with the size of the domestic color TV market, which is 45-55 million units per year, even if laser TV achieves a high growth of 235%, its total market share will be difficult to exceed 0.2% in 2017.

What does this data mean? First, the total size of laser TVs is very small, and the overall market influence is still insufficient. Second, there is a lot of room for laser TVs to grow. Even if there is a sustained increase in doubling, there is no need to worry about them in the short term. Touch the ceiling.

The above two points can be summarized as "high risk, high yield" industry vision. In fact, from the very beginning, the laser television industry developed a development strategy of dislocation, peak shifting, and exclusive advantages. Taking the most cost-effective large screen as the core value point, high-end users and ultra-large screen users as the market fundamentals, the goal is to target the entire 5% share of the color TV market, and to build a 200-300 billion yuan independent market.

From the European and American countries, the demand for large-screen 100-inch homes shows that the market size will not be less than one million units in the domestic population of nearly 1.4 billion. Combining the trend of large screens in traditional TVs, for example, the most popular size of LCD TVs in the past three years has been changed from 42 inches to 55 inches, and the display area has increased by 70%. The demand for large-screen products of 100-inch class will also be substantial. increase.

The goal is rational, possesses historical market logic and realistic market logic. These three are the basis for current laser TV market participants to “dare to invest heavily”. The resonance of market logic and industrial investment is the key to the great vitality of the laser television market. However, this strategic pattern alone is not enough to realize the industrial vision of laser television.

Three bottlenecks constrain the popularity of laser television

The vendor side has a beautiful blueprint, but there is too much white space on the part of consumers - this is the current "basic market" for the laser TV market.

First, as an end user, consumers have very few opportunities to access laser television. TV consumption itself is a home-choice strategy, with inherent democratic resolutions and rational shopping characteristics. This consumption characteristic leads to the market inertia of “conformity consumption” and “according to consumption” in the color TV market. This is a very unfavorable situation for the introduction of a completely new technology. In particular, the definition of the goal of laser television itself is market segmentation, rather than the absolute number and other technology competition. This leads to the existence of practical obstacles for consumers to recognize laser television.

For example, in comparison with OLED TVs, the latter can make full use of the potential of this display technology in the mobile phones, PCs, TVs, and other fields, and as an energy field of “knowledge transfer”, it influences consumers' purchase intentions. In contrast, laser televisions are relatively narrow in terms of alternative market development approaches. This will test the "marketing capabilities" of laser TV industry participants.

Second, from the perspective of product experience, the integrity of the laser television industry is not sufficient. An innovative product with a small total size has some complexity in the product experience. It is an inevitable thing. Perhaps in the field of professional products, this is not a big problem; but in the consumer electronics market, in the context of consumer electronics increasingly emphasizing fooling, humanization, and accessibility, the perfection of laser television experience has become a bottleneck.

As an application product characterized by the existence of a system, laser televisions need at least host, screen, audio, and other hardware; and if you want to achieve an excellent sense of experience, you also need to carefully cooperate with the installation and installation of the host-recoverable TV cabinet. Other external conditions. Also, the system of the laser television itself is more complicated than the traditional flat panel LCD, which constitutes an obstacle to the laser television market. To overcome this obstacle, brand manufacturers need to focus not only on the progress and breakthrough of core technology, but also on the last-mile “shopping experience” of consumers.

Third, benign interactions between products and consumers need to be built on a "solid sales system." At present, the sales of laser television rely heavily on professional home theater integrators. The power of these channels is not enough to create enough "service supply" in the vast general consumer market.

In a sense, the dependence of laser television on "professional home theater service providers" is the "uncoupling of the TV market" from the intermediate links in the laser television industry. In other words, the total volume of the laser TV market has been hovering low, and the important reason is that this industry does not yet have the ability to provide “laser TV sales” services to the most ordinary consumers.

Of course, the promotion of any new technology product is not a "one-stop solution," and laser television products must also comply with the market rules of continuous iteration of industrial scale and cognitive level. However, this does not mean that manufacturers can wait for the market to mature - the maturity of the market and industrial iteration, and the vendors rely on the active efforts.

To understand industrial culture, laser television should establish vertical forces

"The potential market demand is very large and the actual market sales are very small." This logical conflict has determined that the main contradiction in the development of the laser television industry is "manufacturers and brands." Because, in the current basic scale of laser television, as long as manufacturers and brand power can be extended to a new space, natural sales will increase.

This logic is also the source of the 235% increase in the laser TV industry in the first half of 2017: The number of brands and product models in the supply of lasers have experienced a doubling expansion before; the investment in marketing has also created new historical highs. Therefore, in a wider blank area, the market gave a 235% growth rate of laser television.

This logic also explains the importance of “investing” in today’s laser TV market: When laser television is still in its initial development phase, investment in watering and fertilizing is inevitable. Without these inputs, laser television will not grow into a towering tree and may even die.

At the same time, for the market value of laser television products, it also needs to be explained in depth: that is, laser television is not an essential product, but rather a product that is icing on the cake. The core value of laser television is the big screen. Large-screen TVs and small-screen TVs do not have the functional "must replaceability." In recent years, the high-speed popularity of large-screen TVs is not based on technological breakthroughs, but on cost reductions. When the display area of ​​large screens increases, the ratio of price increase to the price increase is greater than 2:1. A considerable portion of consumers choose large screen products. Because the big screen at this time seems to be very cost-effective in terms of unit display area.

For a product with core icing on the market as the core value of the market, the necessary active market cultivation is a must: mandatory products do not require strong market initiative; developmental products need necessary guidance; the need for declining The proportion of the cost of market-oriented products, especially the proportion of the pre-promotion stage will be higher. Therefore, from the perspective of the value characteristics of laser television, this product is also a category that needs “strong” input to promote product popularity.

The industry participants who are really willing to spend money on a new product to cultivate the market are only the “brand manufacturers”. From this point of view, the vertical brand influence will be the key to the competition among laser TV manufacturers.

In the laser television market, Hisense as the earliest esteemed, has made remarkable achievements; nuts as a late joining brand also made a great success. The common feature of the two is the huge vertical influence of the brand. On the contrary, as a brand of projectors with traditional technology, the laser television circle has fallen into some bottlenecks, because the distribution culture of the projection industry itself cuts and weakens the vertical influence of the manufacturers.

To fight this battle without enemies requires strength

As a rookie in the color TV market, many people regard laser television as a competitor of existing technologies. This idea is wrong. In fact, laser television has no enemies.

Compared with LeTV’s 490,000 120-inch LCD, the real advantage of laser TVs is not “cheap”. But the former cannot produce at all. Let's just use a custom concept and speculate about brand influence. This logic not only applies to today's LCD era, but also applies to the future era of OLED TVs: because both are common semiconductor-substrate-based display technologies, they cannot be manufactured on a 100-inch or even larger scale, let alone the product economy. Sex.

From this point of view, laser television is a brand-new field that has opened up the display of color TVs - the 90-inch to 140-inch family curtain market. This market is unprecedented. At present, it can also be said that "there is no future."

Of course, when it comes to the curtain market, many people will point out that "it is not a movie theater." The concept of laser television as a cinema player is also wrong. The core reason lies in the fact that there are "periods" for movie releases, and the film industry continues to provide new films. This has led to more “stock” movies that cannot be watched in cinemas, and more non-movie-like exquisite programs such as variety shows, television shows, and documentaries that cannot be watched in movie theaters. Therefore, content cutting makes laser television not a competitor to the movie giant screen.

On the contrary, the family screen of laser television is an extension of the theater's giant screen culture and an effective complement to the content of movie theater viewing. Laser TV is a “must-have artifact” for movie fans.

A completely new market and no targeted competitors: This makes the laser television market an easy one, but it will also be a bit lonely. The latter is not conducive to the widespread dissemination and rapid recognition of laser television as a big screen concept among ordinary consumers.

In fact, in addition to technological innovation (laser television is unprecedentedly mature in this respect), the market development of laser television is to fight with the "autism of unique new market space." In this regard, the author believes that “letting more people realize that there is such a choice is more important and difficult work for today’s laser television than letting more people choose it”.

In the first half of 2017, laser television achieved a small outbreak with a score of 235%. But this is not the time for rejoicing and cheering. In the face of the bottom line of the original market design of two or three million, laser television is still a very young bud, and it still needs input, care, care, and courageous industrial spirit.