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Chinese Giant LeEco Buys Vizio For $2 Billion, Gets Instant Foothold In US Market (phonedog.com)
Chinese electronics conglomerate LeEco is purchasing American TV manufacturer Vizio for $2 billion, the company announced at a press conference in China on Tuesday. The announcement effectively gives LeEco, formerly known as LeTV, an instant foothold in the U.S. television market. For a refresh, for those who haven't heard much about LeEco, it's one of China's biggest electronics companies. Founded in 2004, it offers a range of services including live-streaming, e-commerce, cloud, smartphones, TV set-top boxes, and smart TVs among many other products and services. One of the recent areas where it has invested its time on is an electric car, which we talked about here a few weeks ago. From a report: Vizio is primarily known for its televisions, like the P-Series sets that we recently unboxed, but they've also dipped their toes into Android. For example, Vizio released a 10-inch tablet a few years ago, and the aforementioned P-Series TV set ships with a 6-inch Android tablet that you use as a remote. Once Vizio is acquired by LeEco, it'll be operated as an independent subsidiary and the current management will remain in California. LeEco CEO Jia Yueting commented on the deal, saying, "We hope that we can use the ecosystem model and create a great integration between Vizio and LeEco and create new values for U.S. users."Having talked to the executives of LeEco in the past few months, I understand that the company intends to bring its products to the American market before its rival Xiaomi does. Xiaomi also intends to bring its smartphones and TVs to the U.S. and European market, but is currently dealing with different regulations.
Hell, I'd not put it past the Chinese to enable even more spying on the whole US though their new consumer products line they now have access to....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That was exactly my thought.
Proverbs 21:19
They don't need ownership to do that, just access to the hardware, which they already have via manufacturing.
Good source? My Vizio is without a doubt the worst tv I have ever owned.
Proverbs 21:19
Vizio's were never really that good in the first place. Try LG, Sony, or Samsung.
Vote trump to get that!
Errr... the build quality for Vizio TVs is dreadful. I had one fail twice in the warranty period and then of course immediately after the warranty expired.
Opening the thing up the mainboard of the device was fastened to the backlight panel chassis with packing tape. I'd never seen such shoddy construction, not to mention the very poor quality of the boards themselves.
In general I think the idea of "smart tvs" is bad for the consumer economically. On top of that selling our viewing habits a profit center for Vizio on their already crappy throw-away TVs. And to add insult to injury, the UI for most smart TVS is just terrible. I replaced the Vizio with a Samsung, not because I wanted another smart tv, but because it was cheap. Not only was the search function hopelessly broken, the damn thing interrupted stuff I was watching on Netflix or Amazon with service change bulletins for Samsung services I neither subscribed to nor used. How could any UI designers be so damned stupid.
But you almost can't get a smallish HD TV that's not "smart". I ended up with a Hitachi "Roku TV" which is just a plain old TV with a Roku stick stuck in one the HDMIs. I'm much happier with Roku's UI and service, but if I wanted to I could just pop the Roku stick out and have a plain old TV.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Me too. Perhaps they will bring some quality to the brand.
Seems like Made in America is actually a statement of lesser quality these days.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Because that's not how it works, and the USD, despite being fiat currency, still has value.
Vizio was a "good" source of tvs. I always saw them as the also ran to Samsung and LG. Weren't they the first to start data mining their customers tv usage to sell to advertisers http://www.networkworld.com/ar...
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
But you almost can't get a smallish HD TV that's not "smart".
But you can leave the network connection unconfigured and not use any of the Smart functions.
Yes, but it doesn't really matter, because like near 100% of all electronics companies the product is made in China.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Well your anecdote is interesting, but it's also fairly irrelevant on several levels.
1. I have an anecdote too. There are presently 3 Vizio TVs in my home, 36"1080p 6Yrs., 47"1080p 7Yrs., 70" 4K 2Yrs. They all work perfectly. They all have EXCEPTIONAL pictures and dynamic contrast levels, especially for their bargain price. None have given any trouble at all. The case of the 70" does occasionally make a popping noise(unobtrusive unless muted) due to heat expansion when changing from a brightly lit display to a dark or all black picture. Though I'm not sure why because it doesn't do this when you switch it off and the screen suddenly goes dark.
2. I gave each of my two kids 36" 1080p, 5 years ago. They're both still working perfectly and looking great. That's 5 Vizio TVs from 6 to two years old, all working great!
3. Vizio may have been an American (marketing) company, but the TVs were made by someone else in China. Now it seems likely that they will be made by LeEco so, all prior build and quality considerations will now have to be reset.
American car hahahaha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's not a new trend Gung Ho came out back in 1986.
But vizio is considered one of the cheap junk brands here.
What I want to know is why about 1/3 of all vizio remotes don't have any letters or numbers on them any more?
I've never seen any other brand do that.
Sure it's a great match with a daskeyboard but it's not really supposed to be.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
That just doesn't change the fact the market is failing to provide a desired option to a segment of their potential customers.
There simply is not enough competition.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Why can't we regulate the sales of US companies to foreign governments....?
Because that would be government regulation of the holy capitalist system.
You see, the capitalist system is self regulating and self correcting.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I haven't seen any of the newer vizio smart tvs but every one i've gotten to play with to date has had that yahoo based thing and had support for youtube and no other functioning video services
Otherwise the two smart tv's at home are an LG and a samsung.
The LG is still receiving occasional software updates has one of those magic remotes support for both netflix and amazon but no netflix profiles support.
The samsung is a couple years newer and has something similar to the magic remote. It supports netflix amazon and vudu. It has a better ui for amazon than amazon fire tv does.
However i've noticed that the audio on amazon gets noticeably out of sync on the samsung after watching a amazon movie for over an hour.
Biggest annoyance I had was when I found I could only have one smart remote. And while you can use a not smart remote with the tv instead samsung won't tell you what part number the remote is or sell you one.
Because one tv remote is good enough for anyone?
I think I have something like 8 remotes lying around the living room all the same model for the same tv just so I can find 1.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Every government, including the US, does regulate the sale of companies to foreign firms. The US won't allow the sale if it would compromise national security. So unless Vizio is working on something for the NSA or the military then the sale will probably go through since it's a pretty small company doing pretty generic electronics work.
If the US blocked every sale to a foreign firm then US companies would quickly find themselves being unable to buy companies in other countries.
My experience with Samsung smart TV is such that I'd never buy another one again. I'm happy with the Hitachi, though.
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Out of curiosity what problems did you have with yours? I've only had the samsung a few months. The only three annoyances I've noticed are that it doesn't have the strongest tuner (I still can't get channel 13), the audio goes out of sync in the amazon app and it can only have one smart remote.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
And what most PC buyers wanted back in the day was a clean version of Windows that wasn't packaged with loads of bloatware and other crap, but the companies selling the computers (or TVs in this case) were getting paid a small bit to include all of that cruft that no one really wanted which let them undercut anyone who wasn't bundling. Most consumers have little more knowledge about TVs than they do about computers so they think the shit sandwich they're being served is supposed to be some kind of culinary pinnacle.
How have you not heard of VIZIO? They're extremely well reviewed, inexpensive and carried by all the major big box stores.
If you've never heard of VIZIO then I'm guessing you haven't shopped for TVs in about 10 years.
They seem to be getting the hang of capitalism.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Regardless, it now is a Chinese brand.
Yes. Sadly in the near future Vizio TVs will be made in China, whereas before...
Wait. What did we really lose here again?
I haven't shopped in America. Is it a USA only company that don't have an international footprint? I have literally NEVER heard of them, despite having purchased two TVs in the past 10 years (Toshiba and a Samsung) and live both in Europe and Australia.
No, the reason you got modded to 0 is because you do not seem to understand that there are actual practical reasons for why fiat money is used: namely that the global economy is of such size, that we don't have anywhere close to enough precious metals to produce coins or representative bills for all trade to be conducted, that way. Like, just as a rough estimate: according to wiki's 2011 numbers there's about 62500 tons of gold currently held as investments and by reserves. At the same time, there's about 1,46 trillion american dollars in circulation
At the current prices of gold, even if ALL of those 62500 tons would be either melted into coins or held in storage to be used as a gold-standard, the value would not cover that of all the dollars in circulation. And that's just the US dollars, the global money reserves combined are about 42 times larger than the amount of US dollars in circulation, so that should give you a ballpark understanding of why we don't use precious metals for currency anymore: there simply aren't enough of them, they're a finite resource and they have other functional uses in industry.
Fractional reserve banking doesn't mean if the bank goes your money goes with it. Countries have deposit insurances to deal with this risk. Even if your bank crashes and burns tomorrow the money you have will not be gone with it, your fund are insured up to 100 000 dollars. Of course, stocks and investments are not covered by this because those are at your own risk, Banks fail all the time, and deposits are backed by deposit insurers all the time. In 2010 alone the US lost about 157 banks, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation paid out about 97 billion to the customers of those banks.
Moreover, Lehman Brothers & al were investment banks not consumer banks, nobody had their deposits lost because these institutions fell. Investors who made risky decisions lost some money, but that's how the market operates
Ah, there it is, I knew the illuminatus gay-jewish-conspiracy side would enter into this sooner or later, since the 'FIAT MONEY HAS NO VALUE OH MY GOD' -card is usually played by people who aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed (such as yourself). Wrap the tinfoil tighter, the gays are coming to steal your money and guns with the ancient Chinese invention called paper money! :D
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
The FDIC insures deposits, correcting the problem that led to the depression era runs on banks.
You seem to be very angry, but don't have anywhere to put that anger. It's led you to choose ridiculous targets. The Jesuit CIA? Nonsense. Jesuits don't run anything in the US that the Catholic church doesn't own. Jesuits are a branch of the priesthood. They already have jobs. Your attacks on Jews and homosexuals are equally absurd.
Figure out who you're actually mad at and deal with your feelings.