Panasonic Hands TV Production to China’s Skyworth

In February of last year, Panasonic CEO Yuki Kusumi announced during an online earnings call that the Japanese company was prepared to scale back or even sell its struggling TV business. Fast forward to Panasonic Experience 2026, the company’s European launch event held in Munich at the end of February of this year. At the event, Panasonic announced a “strategic partnership” with the Chinese company Skyworth, which will assume responsibility for the production, sales, and marketing of Panasonic TVs under the new deal. Panasonic will reportedly continue to provide its expertise and work to maintain the standards of quality that the brand is known for, but Skyworth will effectively be in charge of everything else.

Anyone paying even the slightest attention to the TV business will see a pattern here, as Sony announced in January that its TV division would be handed over to China’s TCL in a similar deal. Even the phrase “strategic partnership” could have been lifted from the Sony/TCL announcement, which used the same language and described a virtually identical arrangement. In both cases, a legacy Japanese TV brand faces an uncertain future under the control of new Chinese ownership. Both Panasonic and Sony make some of the best high-end TVs available, but both have failed to maintain market share in a world where bigger companies, like LG and Samsung, can take advantage of vertical integration. Both of those South Korean companies have their own display-producing subsidiaries that provide OLED panels not only to their own electronics-manufacturing divisions, but also to competitors — including Panasonic and Sony. At the lower end of the price spectrum, where LCD TVs still reign supreme, premium brands like Sony and Panasonic have not been able to keep up with newer and more agile Chinese companies.

According to FlatpanelsHD, Panasonic announced that Skyworth will “lead sales, marketing, and logistics… while Panasonic provides expertise and quality assurance to uphold its renowned audiovisual standards, with full joint development on top-end OLED models.” That last part is significant if true — Panasonic had already outsourced the development and production of its entry-level TVs, so its continued involvement in the OLED segment is the only thing between Panasonic and a total abandonment of its TV business. And Panasonic has deep roots in TV, dating back to the early 1950s. Under the name Matsushita, the company was among the first wave of Japanese TV manufacturers to rise from the ashes of World War II, alongside brands like Toshiba, JVC, Hitachi, and Sharp. But in the intervening decades, most of these have either sold their naming rights to other companies, or abandoned the TV business altogether. More recently, during the plasma TV era, Panasonic became the undisputed picture-quality king for the period between 2009, when Pioneer left the TV market, and 2014, when Panasonic ceased production of plasma TVs and exited the US TV market completely. A decade later in 2024, Panasonic returned to the US market with a small selection of OLED TVs. But in 2025, Panasonic CEO Yuki Kusumi identified Panasonic’s TV division as one of four underperforming sectors of the company (alongside appliances, industrial devices, and mechatronics), promising to take drastic measures by the end of March 2026, to correct course. And that leads us to the Skyworth deal. As with the Sony/TCL deal, the Panasonic/Skyworth arrangement will see the new TVs take advantage of Panasonic’s name recognition and proprietary technology, while getting a boost from the logistical and manufacturing infrastructure of its new Chinese owners. So far, the partnership has been announced for the European and US markets, with the transition taking place gradually across various regions.

Who is Skyworth, Anyway?

Although a household name in China, Skyworth may not be familiar to many of our American readers. Unlike TCL and Hisense, Skyworth has not yet penetrated the TV business stateside, but this deal with Panasonic might change that, if it is successful. Founded in 1988, Skyworth is a top brand in the Chinese display industry, and is a top-three global provider of the Android TV platform, according to Skyworth. The company is also reported to be the third-largest OLED TV manufacturer in the world. Like several other OLED TV brands, it currently sources OLED panels from LG Display. In addition to TV products, Skyworth is said to be a leading supplier of smart technology solutions, and has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2000. The company employs over 40,000 people and is worth more than $19 billion, according to a valuation from 2019. (I was not able to find post-pandemic figures, but you get the idea; it’s a big company.

I did find an interesting tidbit about the company’s founder, who was inspired by a televised soccer game. Skyworth founder Stephen Wong was a university student writing a dissertation on black-and-white TV design when the campus hosted a live telecast. It wasn’t the soccer game itself that inspired Wong, but the fact that the whole campus was watching it on TV. He then vowed to establish a successful company “like Sony and Panasonic,” according to Skyworth’s website. Little did he know that the rise of Skyworth and other Chinese technology giants would eventually lead to the end of the Japanese TV era as we knew it. Skyworth is now headquartered in Shenzhen, which is known as the Silicon Valley of China. The company produces consumer electronics, display devices, digital set-top boxes, security monitors, network communication, semi-conductors, refrigerators, washing machines, mobile phones, and LED lighting.

(Panasonic and Skyworth) share a commitment to innovation and excellence. As a top-five global TV brand, we will bring world-class product innovation supported by extensive R&D investment, alongside a rapidly expanding international footprint and established distribution network. This strategic alignment is expected to accelerate the growth of Panasonic-branded TVs across Europe.

— Peter Zhang, CEO of Skyworth’s parent company, Shenzhen Chuangwei-RGB Electronics Co.

According to the announcement, Panasonic will continue to provide customer support for its TVs, at least for now. Last year’s OLED models, the Z90B and Z95B, are not being replaced by newer models, but will continue to be sold in 2026. At the launch event, the company showcased an OLED TV prototype utilizing the latest Tandem WOLED panel from LG display, but no official product has been announced. However, Panasonic did introduce a new entry-level OLED called the Z85C (or Z86C in some regions). Featuring LG Display’s new less-costly OLED SE panel, the Z85C is likely to be Panasonic’s least expensive OLED offering to date, although pricing has not yet been announced. The Z85C will run on the Google TV OS, while the Z86C sold in the UK will run on the Fire TV OS. Both will be positioned as direct competitors to LG’s entry-level B6 OLED TV, which will also feature the new OLED SE panel. According to reporting from FlatpanelsHD, the Z85C will be available in 55-inch and 65-inch sizes, and will support HDR10+, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and Filmmaker Mode. It will also support HDMI 2.1, VRR, and ALLM, but will offer only three HDMI ports. Panasonic also announced a range of LCD-based TVs, but it is not certain which of these will be available in the US market.

What’s to become of Panasonic TVs?

Given that Skyworth already produces OLED TVs, fans of Panasonic OLEDs have every reason to be optimistic, especially since Panasonic has pledged to co-develop the brand’s high-end TVs as part of the new partnership. (Sony OLED fans such as myself are much more likely to be disappointed, since TCL, the new stewards of the Sony TV brand, have been firmly in the LCD camp.) But even if Panasonic contributes to the design of these new TVs, Skyworth will be in charge, and Panasonic’s Japanese identity may not survive. If you visit Panasonic’s website right now, there is still an obvious sense of pride for the company’s heritage. “Experience Panasonic TVs,” it says, “where 70+ years of Japanese craftsmanship meet cutting-edge innovation. Fused with premium design and unbeatable reliability, every detail reflects the spirit of minimalism and mastery. This is more than tech; it’s Japanese Excellence, engineered for an elevated viewing experience.” So the question remains: will Panasonic TVs still be Panasonic TVs if they are developed, manufactured, and sold by a different company?