A few months ago, former editor for CNET Australia Mark Serrels wrote this on Bluesky (and I'll paraphrase): "Boomers love Sony, I've never seen anything like it." This comment came back to me yesterday, after hearing news of TCL and Sony forming a new joint company to produce Sony home audio and TVs, especially Bravias.
See also: These Are the Most Head-Turning TVs of CES 2026
Some people are shocked by the decision, and it's most likely the long-term fans who are most upset. Yet here's the rub: Sony hasn't produced a TV of its own, from tip to tail, in decades. What this announcement essentially means is that yet another company will be manufacturing the TVs, and it's a company that is able to build the whole thing: TCL. TCL owns its panel manufacturing, has its own assembly plants and an established distribution network. The company is able to do things cheaper, and when you couple this with the company's consistently high performance of the past few years, it makes a collaboration very attractive to a company known for its picture quality.
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I was lucky enough to attend the Japanese launch of Bravia, which was the "butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon" moment that led us here. It was the first time Sony broke its reliance on CRT and even plasma -- the two things the company could produce itself. It was the new world of LCDs, a technology that enabled very thin and light cabinets, and that didn't burn in like those other two types. The original Bravia panels were produced by S-LCD Corporation, a joint venture between Samsung and Sony, a partnership that mimics yesterday's announcement.
The first Sony Trinitron TV, the KV-1310, was built in the 1980s. Sony
In the 80s and 90s, Sony built a strong fanbase with its Trinitron TVs, but its 2005 LCD expansion was something completely different. Sony brought over its picture processing know-how, which the company still prides itself on, but it essentially relied on another manufacturer to make the panels.
I'm not an economist, so I'm not going into the hows and whys of a high-value yen that makes it hard to compete in the world market when it comes to exported goods like TVs. Yet, it's no coincidence that Sony is one of the last high-profile Japanese brands in the American market to resist licensing its name. Sharp, Pioneer and Toshiba are among the many brands that left the US and sold their licenses to another company that could produce good TVs for less. (While Panasonic recently reentered the US market, it only has a couple of models compared to *firehose emoji*.)
The Sony Playstation Portal is one of Sony's latest gaming products. Scott Stein/CNET
Yes, Sony has had an extremely successful gaming business, but the company makes more money on the software than the hardware. The company doesn't have quite the same revenue stream when it comes to TVs, and while it did try with the discontinued Sony Pictures Store and PlayStation Vue, it can't compete with market leaders like Netflix and YouTube TV.
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