This is just straight up false.
OLED productions costs have fallen, and the yields have gotten better — displays of all kinds have gotten cheaper, not just TVs; OLEDs have started showing up in products they haven’t before for cost reasons, etc.
The manufacturers make some profit on the data they harvest, sure; but the biggest BOM costs of TVs have definitely also dropped sharply.
It's probably mixed. I think Vizio's financial statements suggest they lose money on TVs and make it up on user data, but I'm not sure this holds for other manufacturers. I agree with you that TVs have gotten much cheaper to make, which probably incentivized the "collect it all" mentality, since their reach has increased and they can target more customers with lower prices.
The margin on tvs is slim.
Companies like Vizio make vastly more on the ads and data than they do on the tvs.
Some quarters they even take a loss. They took a $7m bath on hardware while booking about $120m on ads and data.
We’re never getting good tv’s back. It’s only going to get worse. Now they’re starting in on monitors.
The only lifeline would be consumer protection, which obviously won’t happen in the US.
So they shouldn’t bother selling the TVs at all?
When they spend 400 on a tv and sell it for 410 and sell the data for 40 it doesn’t mean the data makes 4 times as much as the tv. The cost of gathering that data is still 400, they have nothing to sell without spending 409 in the hardware.
It seems conditions are such that the TV selling business is worthless (i.e. unprofitable) without collecting the data, and the TV data collection business can't work without selling TVs.
Or just sell the tv for a higher price rather than using it as a loss leader?
> Some quarters they even take a loss.
They have good accountants isn’t it?
Both can be true.
The person I’m replying to said “the only reason”, so no; they can’t.
You're correct. And yes, I shouldn't have said “the only reason”, I'd amend that to "one of the reasons".