We got the news for SONY a few weeks ago, selling the business to TCL in China:

Sony and TCL Sign Memorandum of Understanding for Strategic Partnership in Home Entertainment Field
Sony to hand off TV business to joint venture with China’s TCL

And now it's Panasonic exiting the TV business, selling it to Skyworth in China as well.

Panasonic announces TV partnership with China's Skyworth
Panasonic, the former plasma king, will no longer make its own TVs

Julien

Well that just sucks.

China is in big business these days. They will probably invest a lot into creating affordable RAM for the private consumer market. I expect HDD and SSD will be the next on the list when AI and data centres are depleting the market of storage devices.

…yes…the largest country in the world is in fact big business.

I don’t see any reason to expect that AI companies will be able to continue to purchase “all RAM” and “all SSD” for much longer since none of them can actually come close to paying the bills with it. The wind is leaving their sails…Open AI will likely fail, MS will pick up the pieces, get a new CEO and rebrand with less focus on AI features nobody wants, uses, or will pay for. NVidia will have to figure out how to shrink back down to their original size without going out of business. “Using AI” will simply become “using Google” again.

Nobody is going to recommission 3 Mile Island just to make slop that generates zero money. There will be no data centers in space. There won’t be waves of unemployment because of AI. This is all fever dream. China will make excellent RAM and SSDs though. That is unfortunately something nobody knows how to prevent. It’s likely to happen via annexation…

Meanwhile, where can I get a freezer big enough to store 5 Sony 4K displays so I’ll have one for the rest of my life?

Tractor Supply.

Just reading this now. Truly crappy news.

I was thinking this would be something like when Pioneer stopped making their own plasmas and farmed that out to Matsushita for their Kuros, but TCL for Sony? Yikes. I guess Sony doesn't take much pride in their televisions/displays anymore--the same company who put out a 45" CRT in the late 80s just because they could.

What could possibly go wr... oh well.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260305/german-court-orders-tcl-to-halt-qled-tv-ads-over-false-claims

Julien

From what I could gather on the situation with Sony's panels is that TCL will do the manufacturing. Most of the details of the deal between Sony and TCL weren't publicly announced by any first party sources yet, but what has been 100% confirmed is that the manufacturing of BRAVIA display panels and audio equipment will be conducted by TCL starting in April of 2026 (end of Sony's fiscal year). The engineering is still likely to be done by Sony. From a business perspective this makes sense. The same type of engineering -> manufacturing pipeline is very common with other technological components, namely semiconductors. Intel, AMD, etc. all engineer their designs in-house then send these blueprints to the epicenter of manufacturing for their relative industry, Taiwan, or rarely the Netherlands.

My biggest fear is if the engineering gets pawned off to TCL. TCL makes totally garbage panels that aren't worth owning. The big difference between these two processes is that Taiwan (TSMC) and that one fabrication plant in the Netherlands (ASML) are high quality manufacturers, while TCL is total junk. I have low expectations but hope for the best.

Another important question arises though . . . will QA of these TVs still be handled by Sony or by TCL?

That certainly is another very important question. The ambiguity is killing me. I don't think anyone will know until next month.