Monthly color TV production in China 2021-2024
In September 2024, the production volume of color TV sets amounted to over 19 million units, which was slightly lower than last year.
Transformation of the TV marketplace in China
The past couple of years have witnessed a comprehensive transformation in the global TV marketplace as the internet continues to empower all segments of media, and China was no exception. On the demand side, there is a clear, ongoing trend of video content consumers migrating from traditional TV to streaming services. Both, the retail turnover of color TV sets and the number of linear TV viewers in China have been following a downward trajectory. On the contrary, the smart television market was growing, and its sales value was estimated to surpass six hundred billion yuan in 2020.
A similar shift also becomes apparent on the supply side. The market share of traditional well-known Chinese TV manufacturers like TCL and Changhong decreased, while the new players, smartphone producer as well as Internet of Things (IoT) pioneer Xiaomi, quickly achieved its leading position in China’s TV market by offering smart TV sets and a curated list of interconnected smart home products.
TV viewership behavior in the connected decade
Dynamic streaming service platforms have been pushing Chinese consumers away from traditional TVs. Viewership figures reflect this change as the time spent watching TV continues to shrink despite a temporary increase which was due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to a survey conducted by Ipsos in 2020, 78 percent of respondents in China thought that people would watch more TV from streaming services than traditional TV channels.
It was happening over the past few years as people have been switching from TV screens to mobile screens. By 2025, the number of subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) users in China was forecasted to reach over 500 million, meaning that over one-third of the population would tune into streamers. Echoing this change, marketing expenditure in TV was decreasing as more advertisers recognized the potential to reach a growing audience through the internet.
