In 1985, the penetration rate of TV sets in urban Chinese families was 17.2 per 100 households, and just 0.8 in rural families.The TV industry's development since 1978 epitomizes China's economic development over this period.
When China adopted the opening and reform policy in 1978, the nation had just one colour TV factory, in Tianjin, which had an annual output of 3,800 sets. Last year, China produced 82.83 million TVs, almost a half of the world's total and with almost a half of the products sold overseas. The TV industry was one of the biggest beneficiaries of China's opening and its transformation from a planned economy to a market economy.
From 1978, hundreds of production lines appeared in almost every part of China, mainly with Japanese technology. Just like the country, which was learning from international practices, Chinese TV manufacturers also learnt a great deal in the 1980s from major Japanese firms such as Hitachi and Panasonic.
In the 1990s, China's labor cost advantage and its sheer size of the 1.3-billion populations attracted almost every TV maker to produce in China.
The year 1996 was a milestone in the nation's electronics industry, when China cut the import tariff on colour TV sets from 35 per cent 23 per cent, which led to worries that local brands would be crushed by global giants.
In March 1996, Chinese maker Changhong launched the most famous one of its eight rounds of price wars in the 1990s, in which 120 manufacturers were involved. The consequences of the war were twofold over 30 players were eliminated and, more importantly, Chinese brands took the lion's share of the market.
TV manufacturing came as a result of the opening policy and grew with the market economy and globalization. But local manufacturers soon found that price wars hurt them as badly as their competitors. In 2000, the combined profits of all Chinese brands were just half of those of Sony China.
Since then, Chinese TV manufacturers have turned to overseas markets and innovation for profits and growth. In the meantime, China also vowed to become an innovation-driven country.
Only 8 per cent of TVs were flat-panel sets in the first three quarters of this year, but this figure is estimated to reach 80 per cent in 2009.
Source:佚名