Gross margin is not relevant here, profit margin is.
Benq is qisda, and it is a very established ODM/OEM. They have a measly profit margin of 3%. But they also sell a lot of other electronics than just TVs.
Hisense has been selling TVs since the 1980s, and has a 6% profit margin, although I don’t know how trustworthy the Chinese financial figures are. But they also sell a lot of other non TV items.
TCL is relatively new, although they started LCDs more than 15 years ago. But again, they sell more than just TVs. They have the highest profit margin at 10.7%, assuming their numbers are correct.
Vizio seems like the best company to see how much selling TVs earns.
>“For many years, TV making was limited to the few large consumer-electronics companies that could afford the investment,” says Paul Gagnon, senior research director for consumer devices at Omdia, a market research firm. But then it became easier to source components, which in turn increased competition and lowered pricing and profits. “For some brands,” he says, “the TV business here in the States was not profitable anymore.”
>Companies including JVC, Magnavox/Philips, and Toshiba exited the U.S. market, licensing or selling their brands to companies in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere looking to break into the U.S. market.
I think that LG, Sony and Samsung are doing fine making TVs, perhaps for the lower end, the influx of cheaper sets is pressuring profit margins for this segment.
And gross margin is very relevant. Vizio is spending a lot of money either on general expenses, debt, administrative expenses etc. If you compare LG Display to Vizio, Vizio is spending 2x on Selling General and Administrative expenses. If they matched LG, that's an additional $130M in annual profits.
How do you know which expenses outside of gross profit are necessary and not necessary? You don’t, so all you can do is look at net income / profit margin trends across many years for many businesses. If they are all low, then that means there is not much juice to squeeze.
Benq is qisda, and it is a very established ODM/OEM. They have a measly profit margin of 3%. But they also sell a lot of other electronics than just TVs.
Hisense has been selling TVs since the 1980s, and has a 6% profit margin, although I don’t know how trustworthy the Chinese financial figures are. But they also sell a lot of other non TV items.
TCL is relatively new, although they started LCDs more than 15 years ago. But again, they sell more than just TVs. They have the highest profit margin at 10.7%, assuming their numbers are correct.
Vizio seems like the best company to see how much selling TVs earns.
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/tvs/tv...
>“For many years, TV making was limited to the few large consumer-electronics companies that could afford the investment,” says Paul Gagnon, senior research director for consumer devices at Omdia, a market research firm. But then it became easier to source components, which in turn increased competition and lowered pricing and profits. “For some brands,” he says, “the TV business here in the States was not profitable anymore.”
>Companies including JVC, Magnavox/Philips, and Toshiba exited the U.S. market, licensing or selling their brands to companies in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere looking to break into the U.S. market.