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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.
This falls into the no-shit category, but let's wait for the PRC trolls to come and explain to us that we're mistaken about low quality products being made in China, and utilization of that particular business model being an epic mistake. I say this having been a designer of electronics, having seen what their factories do and just how difficult it is to keep them on task and pulling shady ass shit we explicitly asked them not to do. I cannot imagine how bad it is when you give up all control.
Maybe if they didn't want their brand to take a substantial hit, they shouldn't have licensed it out.
At the time, I gather from another article, Sharp was hard-up for money. They've since been bought out...by Foxconn. Pot calling the kettle black, much?
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Can't remember when Sharp had a reputation worth defending but it wasn't this century! Here in the UK HiSense is now a more respected brand than most Japanese brands that went down the licencing cheap foreign factory built crap route long, long ago.