"4K TV is not more than a few hundred dollars more than regular TV, why not buy 4K?" This is a reporter's visit to color TV stores to hear the general voice of customers.

However, just as 4K TV began to be popular in ordinary households, Sharp took the lead in launching the first consumer-grade 8K TV on the market on August 31st. However, the price does not seem to be very close to the people, as high as 68,888 yuan.

According to reports from CCTV before this year, the color TV industry as a whole entered the “winter period” and the average profit of the entire industry was less than 1%. Under the circumstance that the product differentiation was highly similar, the color TV companies had been fighting 4K for two years, and the Differentiation technologies such as OLEDs and quantum dots have finally reached the 8K battlefield.

8K first year giants bet treasure

What is an 8K TV? Technically speaking, 8K TV has a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels, which is 4.3 times that of human eyes. In terms of display effect, it is equivalent to 4 times of 4K display technology and 16 times of ordinary high-definition technology.

Chen Zhenuo, vice president of Foxconn Technology Group, said at the Sharp 8K television conference that Sharp had to turn from "the father of LCD" to "the father of 8K." Based on optimistic expectations, Sharp announced that the global television shipment target for 2017 will be raised from the original plan of 10 million units to 14 million units, and the target will be increased by 40%.

In fact, apart from Sharp, many brands including Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Hisense, Skyworth, and Konka have all demonstrated their 8K TVs. If LG demonstrated 98-inch 8K TV at 2016 AWE Expo, Skyworth 8K TV debuted at CES 2017, and at the just-closed 2017 Berlin Electronics Show, Hisense also showed only 4.9 mm thick 8K TV.

According to Nielsen's "China's second quarter consumer confidence index report," Chinese consumers are increasingly pursuing high-quality products. Up to 75% of consumers in first-tier cities are willing to pay more for advanced electronic product technologies. Perhaps this is The important reason supporting the company's "betting" 8K.

Therefore, many people in the industry stated that 2017 is the "first year" of 8K TV. It is very likely that other brands will officially launch consumer-grade 8K TVs during the year.

However, the senior home appliance industry observer Liang Zhen believes that “because of the downturn in the color TV industry, 8K TV is more of a brand gimmick at this stage, and this market will only mature three to five years later.”

The store is still the 4K protagonist

However, it seems premature to talk about the popularity of 8K TV. Its "predecessor" 4K TV is currently a hotshot. Since the launch of LG Electronics in Berlin in May 2012, it has been recognized as the world’s first 4K TV. After the development and promotion in recent years, 4K TV is undoubtedly the mainstream of TV.

Times Finance visited several offline appliance stores and found that the best display locations in all branded showrooms were given to 4K TVs and curved TVs. "Now we are definitely pushing 4K TVs. Customers who come to visit the store will never buy it, but 90% of them are willing to try 4K," the sales staff of Suning's e-shop told Times Finance.

The salesman also said that the price of 4K TVs has dropped a lot now. "Since the beginning of the first two years of selling, the prices were all one or twenty thousand yuan, and it was indeed more difficult to sell." He introduced a 49-inch ordinary high-definition television at the counter, priced at 3,299 yuan, while the same size 4K TV, priced at 3,599 yuan, the spread is only 300 yuan.

However, when Time Financial asked whether there were 8K TVs for sale, many salesmen said they knew that there were 8K products, but they are not yet available for sale.

According to Ove Cloud's data, from January to July 2017, 4K TVs accounted for 57% of the total sales of domestic LCD flat-panel TVs, and sales accounted for 77% of sales. Another white paper in the Chinese TV industry in 2016 shows that in the TV market, apart from “smart” (28%), consumers think that the most useful technology is “4K” (26%).

A color TV retail industry told Times Finance that 4K TVs are still in their “strong years.” Even if 8K TVs are to be launched, the former’s “life cycle” will be half, and there will be three to four years of hot sales in the future.

Transmission technology, high prices become barriers to popularization

According to Time Finance, compared with 4K TVs, 8K TVs have a corresponding increase in the storage conditions and transmission pressure due to the increase in the resolution level.

A related person in the industry chain told Time Finance that the volume of a 4K movie that is suitable for network transmission and that has been compressed by audio is about 200G. If you watch online, you need a network transmission speed of 40m/s for smooth viewing. However, the current 200M fiber that Chinese households have begun to popularize has a theoretical download speed of only 25m/s. “If you are watching an online movie that advertises 4K, it is basically 4K, which is shrinking,” said the source.

He continued to explain that 8K resolution video is currently rare, because one minute video footage requires more than 100 G, and 20 minutes up to 4TB, which is a very harsh storage condition for general personal computers. , not to mention smart TVs with less storage space.

Yi Qiyi, senior vice president of Galaxy Internet TV Co., Ltd., deputy general manager Duan Youqiao also believes that the development of 8K is like the existence of a cask principle, the definition is only doubled, but the amount of data will increase many times. There are many obstacles to the transmission of such large data on the Internet from set-top boxes and televisions for shooting, production, integration, and broadcasting.

Obstructing the popularity of 8K TV, in addition to technology, there is another keyword: price.

When 4K TV was first introduced, it was up to tens of thousands of yuan or even tens of millions of high-end "things". In 2012, LG and Sony first introduced 4K TVs, all priced at more than 100,000 yuan, until five years later. The threshold for 4K TVs dropped below 5,000 yuan. Sharp's first consumer-grade 8K TV is priced at more than 60,000 yuan, which is not surprising.

The high price, which is a large part of the reason, may be attributed to the fact that the current 4K supply chain is not yet mature and the supply of upstream panels is low. Senior home appliance observer Liang Zhenpeng said to Times Finance: “At present, 8K panels cannot be mass-produced yet, so the cost is definitely still high. With support for 8K playback requiring higher-level CPUs and electronic components, the overall finished product price is difficult to reduce. ”

According to Time Finance, Japan’s JDI was the first company to develop the first 8K panel in 2015, followed by Samsung and BOE. They have also successively developed their own 8K panels. In addition, after Foxconn acquired Sharp, it also invested 61 billion yuan to build a 10.5-generation LCD panel production line in Guangzhou this year. In 2019, 8K panels will be put into production.

Ove Cloud Network predicts that by 2019, 8K panel production will usher in a large-scale outbreak, with an annual output of 6 million to 7 million pieces. According to QunZhi Consulting, by 2022, 8K panel shipments will reach 8.2 million units, and the penetration rate will increase to 3.3%. By then, the price of 8K TVs is expected to drop significantly.

Even though the price of tens of thousands of yuan still deters most consumers from buying, there are industry insiders telling Times Finance that this price is not too high compared with the high-end 4K TVs on the market.

In this regard, Times Finance selected more than 25,000 yuan for high-end 4K TVs on Jingdong Mall, and found 200 to 300 models. Some brand names such as Samsung, Sony, LG and other 70-inch 4K TVs sold for more than 50,000 yuan. , and Sharp's 8K TV does not have much difference.

"When the overall price falls, the popularity of 8K TV may be faster than 4K TV," said the color TV retailer told Times Finance.

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