Hisense has announced that it has acquired Toshiba’s TV production brand, R&D and operation services for 12.9 billion Japanese Yen (that’s €96.7/£86.9 billion).
The Chinese manufacturer has acquired 95% stock shares of Toshiba Visual Solutions Corporation (‘TVS’), with the manufacturer still retaining 5% slice of its stock holding.
Hisense has publically stated that it will obtain research and development, production, and sales functions as well as the license to use the Toshiba brand for a period of 40 years for partners operating in Europe, South East Asia and other markets around the world. This will include Toshiba’s two factories located in Japan, in addition to the company’s employees and its portfolio of TV technology business patents for image quality and acoustics.
Toshiba may have introduced its first venture in 4K OLED technology earlier this year, but the manufacturer is still in relatively hard financial times (posting a £3.8bn loss just over a year ago). It hopes to reignite its fortunes in the European market once again, however, with a line of 4K TVs equipped with HDR and Amazon Prime Video in 2018.
Hisense, despite its ongoing court battle with Sharp over their 2015 licensing deal, currently sits fourth in the table of largest TV vendor, and has benefited significantly from considerable domestic and overseas orders. Introducing 100-in 4K screen laser projection systems with a $12,999 price tag can’t help either.
Neither brand has publically commented on the slightly surprising deal as yet, and what kind of products we can expect from Toshiba going forward.