No withdrawal, no licence model: What Sony is really planning with TCL

Luca Fontana

23.1.2026

Translation: machine translated

TCL televisions with Sony logo? This concern quickly made the rounds after the media release. But if you take a closer look, you will realise that there is (still) no question of divesting the TV business. What is actually behind the planned joint venture.

In the last few days, a story has emerged around Sony and TCL that has quickly developed a very clear narrative: Sony is giving up the TV business. Sony is pulling out. And in the end, we'll soon be buying TCL televisions that simply have a Sony logo on them.

In fact, this would be a kind of licence model in which Sony still exists as a brand, but no longer plays a major role in technical and strategic terms.

This image has also consolidated surprisingly quickly in the reporting because the official media release from Sony and TCL is typical corporate language: a lot of vague, little concrete. It is precisely this vagueness that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. That's why I asked my Sony contacts once again: What did Sony really want to say with this media release - and what didn't they want to say?

Important first of all: What I took away from these conversations are not official Sony statements, quotes or authoritative statements. They're insights from conversations with people who are close to the topic and know more than we do from the outside. Nevertheless, this is not the final truth, but the current state of knowledge, which is subject to change.

What is really certain today

Let's start with what can be said quite clearly. As of today, there is no finalised deal. Sony and TCL have not yet founded a company, have not yet sold anything and have not yet acquired anything. What does exist is a declaration of intent - a so-called memorandum of understanding.

This memorandum of understanding essentially says:

• Sony and TCL intend to establish a joint venture by spring 2026.
• A new company that will be responsible for the home entertainment business of both companies. Televisions, audio, the whole home entertainment package.
• The envisaged shareholding is 51 per cent for TCL and 49 per cent for Sony.

In purely formal terms, this would give TCL a majority stake in the new company and therefore the say. But: Everything else - how this company works in concrete terms, who decides where, how products are created, where they are created, and how the brands appear on the market - has not yet been finalised.

This is exactly what the next few months are for. Only once these negotiations have been finalised will the whole thing actually be implemented. Realistically, we are talking about an operational start in 2027 at the earliest, which is important. It shows that we are not talking about a fait accompli, but about a process.

The Sony message from the talks

What Sony made very clear to me is that this joint venture is not a divestment of the TV business. In other words, Sony does not want to withdraw from the market or become a pure licence brand. The image of the «TCL TV with the Sony logo» is also very clearly rejected.

What an internationally recognised TV great like Caleb Denison, who has his own sources, also says

From Sony's point of view, it's about something else: a strategic realignment in which two companies with very different strengths try to bring these strengths together. Sony continues to see itself as a premium brand, a technological pacesetter in image processing, processors, motion control, audio and software. TCL, on the other hand, is strong in industrial topics, i.e. mass production, scaling, cost control and vertical supply chains.

The idea behind this is therefore not: one disappears, the other takes over. Rather: Both do what they do best - together in a new structure.

What is explicitly still open

Now comes the part that is neglected in many articles: there are currently a whole series of questions that nobody can answer conclusively. Not just us, apparently not even Sony and TCL.

For example: Who will actually decide on the product strategy in future? About prices? About model gradations? How much influence does TCL really have in day-to-day operations, despite its 51 per cent stake? And how much does Sony have with its 49 per cent? Where do you let the others do it and where do you want to control it yourself? How are sales and margins distributed? Will Japan lose its Sony production sites? What about the staff? And perhaps most exciting for us:

How do Sony and TCL want to appear in retail in the future?

These are not uncomfortable questions, but precisely the points that will not be negotiated until mid-2026. That's why it's important to be careful with absolute statements. As I said, anyone buying a new TV next year will still find both Sony and TCL TVs.

So: Let's categorise them neatly now

Important: What comes next is my personal assessment. And it says that TCL is one of the few manufacturers in the world that has extremely deep vertical integration with its own display factories, its own backlights, its own panels and huge quantities. However, processors, image processing and the control of panels and backlighting have been seen as the Group's weak points for years.

Sony, on the other hand, has been pursuing the opposite approach for years: panels and central components are purchased externally - from LG, Samsung and in some cases already from TCL - and then refined with its own processors, image processing, motion control and audio tuning. The previous narrative was clear: we take the best hardware available from everyone and turn it into a premium product with Sony intelligence. Voilà.

This may work in the high-priced premium segment, where margins are high and quantities are manageable. However, the mass market can hardly be dominated with this strategy because it is too expensive. Sony has openly communicated this for a long time: Last year, Shoji Charlie Ohama, Head of TV and Home Audio Video for Europe, said that they were deliberately focusing on the premium segment and leaving the rest of the market to the competition - «voluntarily».

Now, however, it seems that the company is no longer quite so satisfied with this self-restriction: Sony wants (or needs) to take more of the mass market pie. That's why the partnership with TCL makes perfect sense in this logic: the Chinese TV giant supplies industrial power, even if Sony limits itself to a single partner in future. In return, the Japanese TV giant will supply TCL with intelligence and fine-tuning.

The result for customers will still be a Sony TV, but perhaps at prices or in segments in which Sony has struggled to keep up. Theoretically. To what extent the technology transfer will lead to better processors for TCL - to name one potentially possible scenario - and whether the two companies will continue to compete openly in the retail space despite the joint venture or whether they will try to get out of each other's way remains to be seen.

The only certainty is that answers will only be available next year, when the first Sony and TCL devices from this new structure actually hit the shelves.

Apropos: We also discussed the topic at length in our digitec podcast «Tech Affair»:

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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