(Yicai Global) Aug. 20 -- China is in the midst of a slowdown in the television industry and most listed TV makers are logging falling profits, yet the value of the large display of intelligent home appliances continues to attract new giants from other sectors, nonetheless, Huawei Technologies among them.

Shenzhen-based Huawei is hiring people to build a TV project group and contact upstream panel makers, a source told Yicai Global. The group will study hardware and user interfaces. In contrast to Xiaomi, Huawei may lay its emphasis on positioning itself in 8K displays in the fifth-generation communications era.

However, relevant personnel of Huawei told Yicai Global that it "had not heard" this news.

Huawei started to research the color TV market five years ago and recently got in touch with TV panel makers, Peng Xiandong, general manager of the consumer electronics department of research firm China Market Monitor, told Yicai Global. "Thus, it is not strange that Huawei is starting to produce televisions," Peng said.

Huawei will not just continue to develop its business in the communications industry as such devices -- including smartphones -- no longer enjoy rapid growth, but must also embark on a new strategic sector, Peng believes. Since Internet of Things and 'smart family' hold forth rosy future prospects, the company has also deployed in family routers and family internet. Large intelligent displays are likewise a key feature in smart home appliances.

A multitude of people also use Huawei-branded phones and the company thus needs to meet their needs to exploit their value. TV users are gradually getting used to paying for videos, with each user of Chinese intelligent TV paying on average CNY60 (USD8.75) per year to color TV makers. If a company has tens of millions of users of intelligent TV, it can achieve operating profit of CNY600 million (USD87.5 million), which shows the potential for future development of the large smart display market.

Huawei wanted to explore the TV business two and three years ago and planned to provide overall solutions for European clients, encompassing communication devices to terminal products. It negotiated with panel makers at that time about 4K TV, but has still made no clear progress today, an unidentified insider with upstream TV providers told Yicai Global.

Huawei will henceforth target 5G applications to explore TV businesses as it is meaningless to develop 5G applications only for mobile terminals, since 5G has two applications in terminals: driverless cars and 8K displays. Since a family needs to pay dearly to increase its broadband speed, 5G wireless communication technology can meet the demand of 8K ultra-high-definition displays, and the company therefore projects huge potential for the 8K television market.

Huawei has teamed with BOE Technology Group -- whose "three core businesses are display and sensor devices, smart systems and healthcare services," per its website -- several times this year to explore businesses in 8K display market and exhibited 8K display solutions in the 5G communication era. 

Following CSTB Telecom and Media 2018 in Russia in January and the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, Spain in February, Japanese communications operator Docomo, together with Huawei and BOE, firstly realized the 8K+5G video livestreaming and 8K video-on-demand during the EXPO COMM Wireless Japan in May.

8K resolution is the highest ultra-high TV resolution in digital television and cinematography, and denotes a 7,680-pixel horizontal resolution that forms an overall image dimension of (7680 × 4320), also known as 4320p.

Editor: Ben Armour