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Sharp To Americans: You Don't Want to Buy a Sharp-Brand TV (wsj.com)
Sharp has sued China's Hisense Electric, which licensed the Sharp brand for televisions sold in the U.S., accusing Hisense of putting the Sharp name on poor-quality TVs and deceptively advertising them (alternative source). From a report: The court action is the latest effort by Osaka-based Sharp to retrieve the right to use its own name when selling TVs in one of the world's largest markets. Sharp is trying to recover its position as a global maker of consumer electronics. Hisense rejected the allegations and said it was selling high-quality televisions under the Sharp name. The dispute illustrates the risks when the owner of a well-known brand name gives up control over products sold under that name.
It sure did pay the bills back in the '80s when I worked in TV/VCR repair. The TV sets regularly caught fire when the flyback transformers carbonized (prompting a class action lawsuit and a huge settlement), and their VCRs were a constant source of mechanical issues, far worse than most of the competition.
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and I'm not giving my money to Rupert Murdoch.
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Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Horse puckey. Sharp had a number of quite nice products over the years which were ahead of their time. If you ever had one of those TRS-80 pocket computers, you were running a Sharp device and didn't even know it due to the cross branding.
Sharp was a top tier brand -- Sony and Sharp co-funded an LCD panel factory, and Sony TV's used Sharp's LCD panels. (The whole reason Sony was involved in the factory is because they wanted Sharp's LCD panels).
The problem is that Sharp happened to buy the factory just before the housing crisis -- and the market for new TV's vanished overnight. If you took any time to look outside the world of the PlayStation, you'd see that Sony had some serious problems selling their TV & home theatre products during the same period.
With nobody buying, Sharp was unable to sell their own TV's, or LCD panels to Sony. State-sponsored/funded Chinese companies swooped in as the market was picking up again, and Sharp wasn't able to recover.
So yeah... Sharp was unlucky in its timing of building a factory, and the PRC's government decided it was in their interest to spend government money to bankrupt a foreign company. Nothing new about either of those things.
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