Global home appliances manufacturing giant, Hisense Electronic Company Ltd, has acquired 95 per cent shares of Toshiba Visual Corporation (TVS), the television business subsidiary of the Toshiba Corporation. This acquisition includes Toshiba TV productions, brands and Operations service worldwide.
The acquisition agreement which was signed off recently with erstwhile owners, Toshiba Corporation of Japan, cost Hisense a sum of 12.9 billion Japanese Yuan, about $115 million. The Toshiba Corporation management will however retain 5 per cent of the business’s total shareholding.
Under the new arrangement, Hisense will control the entire Toshiba businesses including production, research and development, engineering, and sales functions.
Until this development, Toshiba had dominated the global television technology and market shares for 142 years and boasts an incredible share across the entire Asia, America, Europe, and the Latin Americas. The company primarily operated Toshiba TV, and various auxiliary products including, commercial display and advertisement display products. They had two factories in Japan with hundreds of employees and a significant IP portfolio related to TV business, including patents related to TV image quality and acoustics.
Chief Executive Officer, Hisense Group, Mr. Lin Hongxin, lauded the major acquisition and assured all stakeholders of the company’s determination to optimise Toshiba’s resources in research and development, supply chain, global sales channels and support each other in display technology to provide competitive content, operation services for smart TVs in the global market; as well as to accomplish sustained fast-growth and hold on the Japanese market.
In the last 12 months, sales of Toshiba TV had ranked No.3 in the Japanese market, while Hisense TV’s market share is the highest among all foreign brands. All over the world, Hisense’s colour TV business ranked third in 2016 while it also maintained a consistent leadership position in China for 13 consecutive years.
As a key element of Hisense’s global strategy, the brand sponsored the last two editions of the European Cup and the FIFA Confederation Cup. Hisense is also the first Asian corporate sponsor of the FIFA World Cup, currently leading other global corporate giants in the sponsorship of the 2018 FIFA World Cup (Russia 2018) holding from June 14 to July 15 next year.
In Nigeria, Hisense has been equally visible with products sales and services nationwide through its proxy Fouani Nigeria Limited. Only recently, it opened its first showroom in Port Harcourt while other outlets are billed for opening in Lagos, Kano, Ibadan and Abuja soon.
According to Hongxin, Hisense, with the benefit of the Toshiba acquisition, will develop and enlarge its international strategy for TV business in research and development, branding and marketing by operating other multiple brands.” The cooperation between Hisense and Toshiba will surely drive fresh innovation in the picture of TV business globally”, he said.
