UPDATE: LG has clarified that it won’t be selling its TV business to any company, including Hisense, and consider this just as a false rumour spread in Korean media.

LG is reportedly in discussions to sell its TV business to Hisense — a move that would mark another major exit for LG after it shut down its smartphone business in 2021. According to Korean outlet EBN, LG executives travelled to Beijing and met with senior Hisense officials to discuss restructuring plans for its TV business, including the possibility of a full sale.

If confirmed, this would be one of the most consequential moments in consumer electronics history — the end of nearly 60 years of LG televisions.

How Did It Come to This?

The story of LG’s TV crisis is the story of the entire premium TV market being undercut from below — relentlessly, systematically, and faster than any legacy brand anticipated.

Value-orientated brands like TCL, Hisense, and Xiaomi have been rapidly gaining market share, particularly in Asia Pacific and Latin America, by offering competitively priced large-screen smart TVs that are good enough for most buyers at a fraction of the price of LG’s OLED flagship lineup.

In 2023, Samsung’s global TV shipments decreased by 9.8%, while Hisense and TCL saw increases of 12.4% and 16.3% respectively. LG Electronics experienced a 7.4% decrease in shipments over the same period. Those trends have only accelerated since. TCL and Hisense have more than doubled their market shares since 2021.

The result: The South Korean giant’s TV margins have collapsed to roughly 1–2% — a business that generates almost no profit on billions in revenue, while requiring constant R&D investment to maintain OLED panel leadership that buyers increasingly will not pay a premium for.

According to market research firm Omdia, TCL and Hisense now hold global TV shipment shares of 14% and 12.5% respectively — putting enormous pressure on brands like LG and Samsung.

In 2025, Samsung led in unit shipments with approximately 17% market share, followed by TCL at 16% and Hisense at 10%. LG Electronics held just 9%.

The combined TCL + Hisense + Xiaomi market share figure across major markets has now surpassed the combined Samsung + LG number — a market structure that would have seemed impossible five years ago. This is not a temporary disruption. It is a permanent structural shift in who makes televisions and for how much.

Sony Already Made This Move

LG is not the first legacy brand to face this reckoning. Sony recently sold a majority stake in its TV business to TCL — a deal that preserves the Sony brand on televisions while offloading the manufacturing, supply chain, and margin pressure to a Chinese company equipped to compete on cost. The Sony-TCL arrangement has become the template for what a legacy exit from TV hardware can look like without a full brand abandonment.

LG appears to be considering the same playbook with Hisense — sell the manufacturing and distribution liabilities, keep the brand value and software layer.

What LG Would Keep: webOS

Even if LG eventually steps back from making TVs, the company may still stay involved in the entertainment space. EBN says LG could focus more on its webOS platform and software services for monitors, automotive systems, and smart displays rather than building TVs itself.

This is the strategic logic that makes the sale coherent rather than simply a retreat. webOS is one of the most widely deployed smart TV operating systems globally — and unlike hardware, software scales without manufacturing cost. A post-TV LG could license webOS to Hisense-built sets, collect royalties, and focus engineering investment on higher-margin segments like automotive displays and commercial monitors where Chinese competition is less severe.

What This Means for India

India is one of the most price-sensitive TV markets in the world — and one where Xiaomi TVs, TCL, and Hisense TVs have already made serious inroads in the ₹20,000–₹50,000 segment. LG’s India TV business has long relied on OLED premium positioning to justify higher prices, a strategy that works at the top of the market but leaves the mid-range increasingly exposed.

If LG exits TV hardware globally, the India impact is twofold: OLED supply dynamics shift as LG Display’s panel business diverges from the LG Electronics brand, and the premium mid-range bracket opens further to Chinese brands that are already undercutting Samsung on price in most retail channels.

For Indian buyers currently considering an LG OLED purchase, the brand’s long-term after-sales support picture in India becomes a legitimate consideration — not an immediate concern, but one worth watching as these negotiations develop.

The Bigger Pattern: Chinese Brands Are Winning Hardware

This is not just a TV story. The same dynamics playing out in televisions — aggressive Chinese pricing, collapsing legacy brand margins, strategic exits — are visible in smartphones, laptops, and now large-screen displays. Tariffs on electronics imported from China have reshaped brand competition, with premium brands like Samsung and LG shifting production to avoid tariffs while budget brands like TCL and Hisense adapted by increasing local assembly in Mexico to maintain their price advantage.

The cost gap between Korean and Chinese TV manufacturing is structural, not cyclical. No amount of OLED technology leadership closes a 40–50% price difference for the median buyer.

The Bottom Line

LG may be getting ready for another major exit from consumer tech — this time from the television business it helped define for nearly six decades. The Hisense talks are not confirmed as a deal, and LG has not issued an official statement. But the strategic logic is undeniable: 1–2% margins, declining shipments, and a Chinese competitor willing to pay for the brand distribution network make a sale more rational than continued losses.

The era of Korean dominance in global television is ending. What replaces it — Chinese hardware with Korean software, or something else entirely — will define the next decade of the industry.

UPDATE by LG

“We are writing to you with regards to the story on LG restructuring its TV business on your platform.

The news is baseless and therefore incorrect, speculative, and misleading. And we would therefore urge you to not put out this incorrect and unverified news on your platform.

The original news was originally shared by a Korean media outlet, and the article has since been taken down for the same reasons mentioned above. We trust that you too will take the right action by pulling down this incorrect story.

Thank you for your support.“

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