Tech is affordable but brands charge obnoxiously, says Thomson on rise of affordable QLED TVs in India

By Abhik SenguptaThe smart TV market in India is experiencing gradual growth even as smartphone and laptop shipments plummeted last year. While traditional LED displays remain the preferred choice, advanced display technologies such as QLED are gaining ground. This is because the premium smart TV market, which was once dominated by four or five brands, now has more players, according to Avneet Singh Marwah, CEO of Super Plastronics Private Limited (SPPL). The company is the brand licensee of Thomson and four other TV companies.

In an interview with India Today Tech, Marwah said that Thomson has witnessed a 72 per cent month-on-month growth since the launch of Thomson QLED TVs in September last year. He adds that Thomson QLED TVs are “one of the fastest growing QLED TVs in India” and have been sold out on several occasions. Marwah has credited the growth of QLED TVs to customers’ awareness, especially young consumers who “like to experiment and compare specifications.”

There’s also a first-mover advantage, and Thomson was the first brand to bring QLED TVs with Google TVs at an affordable range. Its 50-inch QLED TV with Google TV OS and Dolby Vision and Atmos is available for Rs 31,999 on Flipkart, which is much more affordable than global brands like LG, Samsung, and Xiaomi offer. India Today Tech also reviewed the Thomson QLED TV in November 2022, and we found it to be a value-for-money device that offers a good viewing experience.

When asked why QLED TVs by Thomson are highly affordable, Marwah said that big brands have been charging “obnoxiously high” from consumers when the technology is “not that expensive.”

He adds, “For two decades, there were only four brands in India with about 92 per cent of the market. And they were exploiting Indian customers. The technology always has been affordable, it’s the price that they have always charged was premium. In India, the biggest problem has been if you’re not expensive, you are not premium. And that’s the taboo we are changing. We have now seen a lot of Indian manufacturers also breaking that taboo.”

India needs to break China’s monotony

Thomson brand licensee SPPL CEO Marwah claims that the biggest challenge for the Indian smart TV industry comes from China, which disrupted the global market after imposing strict lockdowns to curb rising COVID-19 cases last year.

He believes that India and other countries need to break China’s “monopoly” on open cells, a key material for TV displays. Marwah notes:

“China has created an ecosystem to create a lobby for raw material parts that only China can manufacture and control the pricing. So when there was a lockdown, a lot of problems were happening. Today, when an un-lockdown has happened, and countries are coming back to normal, they have started increasing the price of the open-cell. It is completely controlled by them. And four or five major open cell manufacturers have a government share (Chinese government). And not just Indian manufacturers, brands across the globe face the same challenges.”

To tackle China’s pricing, the Indian government has announced a measure in this year’s Union Budget. There’s also anticipation that smart TV prices may go down in India this year as the customs duty on parts of open cells of TV panels has been reduced to 2.5 per cent. Marwah claims that while it is a “good” budget as the Finance Ministry “has something for each and every sector,” a reduction of 2.5 per cent won’t make a huge difference.

But brands like Thomson, Kodak, and even Xiaomi have managed to keep the prices of premium TVs low, but there’s always a hidden cost. When asked what choices brands need to make to keep the prices affordable, Marwah said:

“We start comparing TV with smartphones. On smartphones, memory, RAM, and everything is huge. Whereas, in television, the minimum requirements are 1GB RAM + 6GB or 2GB RAM + 16GB. That’s the minimum requirement for a processor. That’s what most TV brands fulfil. The moment we do 4GB RAM and 32GB storage, then the TV gets very expensive. Plus, there are over 6,000 applications on Google Play. So the challenge for all of us is whether to increase the memory or to be affordable. Having said that, Google is trying for a better or faster process in that memory. But yes, there’s a lot of scope for improvement, and a lot of upgrades we are doing in 2023.”

Lastly, Marwah highlights that brands under SPPL (Thomson, Kodak, and more) aim to ensure that they are following strategies that directly help Indian customers rather than adding extra hardware to make TVs look more attractive. He adds, “If a product is not solving the problem and adding a feature for the show, I don’t see any value in that. If I’m giving 60W of sound output, there is no need for external speakers. India is still one of the fastest growing internet speeds, but 80 to 85 per cent of people still use the hotspot to use their internet on their televisions. So we are working on these kinds of issues, rather than some gimmick which is not solving the problem.”

Meanwhile, Thomson has launched smart TVs under the Alpha series. Its 24-inch Smart TV is priced at Rs 6,499, and the top-end 40-inch variant is priced at just Rs 13,499.