Panasonic could abandon the U.S. TV market once again
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By
Simon Cohen Published February 12, 2025 |
I’ve got some grim news for North American fans of Panasonic’s TVs. After returning to these shores in 2024, the company is now mulling the sale of its entire TV division, according to a report from Nikkei.
The potential move would be part of a group restructuring at Panasonic Holdings, intended to enable faster decision-making and focus on growth. “We are prepared to sell it if necessary,” said President Yuki Kusumi said of the TV division on February 4 during an online press conference, “but we have not yet decided on a plan.”
Kusumi went on to say that it would be difficult to find a buyer. Despite producing some of the best-performing TVs on the market — Digital Trends’ reviewer Caleb Denison said that the 2024 Panasonic Z95A OLED TV is “one of the top 5 TVs ever made” — Panasonic has struggled to increase its market share both at home in Japan, where it once commanded 20% of sales, and abroad.
While a sale of the TV division wouldn’t necessarily mean that Panasonic TVs would leave the U.S. immediately (or at all), it would at the very least mean that there would be a new management team overseeing the development of future Panasonic TVs. In one particular doomy scenario, we’d end up with TVs that bear the Panasonic brand, but that don’t offer the exciting performance of the company’s current flagship, the Z95B OLED TV, which won one of Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2025 awards.
The other possibility is that Panasonic won’t be able to sell the TV business, in which case it may elect to simply shutter it. That would be sad for the world’s TV enthusiasts. Panasonic has a legendary history of moving TV technology forward, from its original CRT tube TVs to the plasma models that effectively ushered in the age of high-quality flatscreen HDTVs, to its current class-leading 4K OLED TVs.
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