- A report claimed LG was in talks with Hisense executives to explore a possible sale of LG's TV business
- The original report has been taken offline to be "reviewed by an administrator"
- LG tells TechRadar that "These reports are groundless"
Today has been a rollercoaster for fans of the best OLED TVs — a major report from Korean business news outlet EBN claimed that LG was exploring spinning-off and/or selling its TV business to Hisense.
However, the original report has now been removed from the EBN website, replaced with just a pop-up message that says the report is down while it's "reviewed by an administrator".
An LG spokesperson told TechRadar "These reports are groundless." LG provided a slightly longer statement to Android Authority that's more forceful: "LG Electronics would like to state that this news regarding the potential sale of its TV business is completely baseless and therefore entirely speculative and misleading."
The original report claimed that LG executives travelled to Beijing to meet executives from Hisense, including discussions of the future of LG TVs and possibly a sale of the entire LG TV business to Hisense.
Maybe this happened, maybe it didn't, maybe it was misreported — LG's denial is firm, but companies often firmly deny things they then go on to do. But if the same were to happen, it would follow a growing trend, making it not necessarily that surprising.
From Philips to Sony to Panasonic… maybe LG?
If LG were considering a full sale or a partnership with Hisense, it wouldn't be the first big TV brand to do so: Sony's partnership with TCL is likely to give Sony's mid-market and budget models a boost, with Sony providing the brand cachet and proprietary technology and TCL bringing its high volume manufacturing efficiencies.
Panasonic has reached a similar arrangement with Skyworth to make its US TVs, and many Japanese TV brands are made under license too, including Toshiba and Sharp.
Philips' TVs have been made under licence for years, with TP Vision making them in Europe and Skyworth making them for the US.
The reason for all this is simple: making TVs is a tough business with fairly low profit margins, so you need to sell tons of TVs to make money. LG's OLEDs do good business, but its LED TVs have struggled to impress, and are nowhere near as dominant as its OLED sets.
TCL and Hisense are grabbing market share across the board thanks to being able to produce really solid mid-range sets that are pretty damn cheap — so much so that Hisense eclipsed LG sales in the premium TV market last year.
This kind of deal could likely boost LG's entry level and mid-range offerings, but there would probably be a lot of resistance to it online from OLED fans, because Hisense doesn't have much love for that tech. (A similar worry is facing Sony fans from the TCL partnership.)
Still, LG says you have nothing to worry about — reports of its TV business' death have been greatly exaggerated, apparently.
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