1. ZION to make its North America debut at CEDIA Expo 2026
Source: ZION to Make Its North American Debut at CEDIA Expo 2026
It’s been fun keeping tabs on the home entertainment industry as, despite any governmental attempt at quashing foreign involvement, it seems overseas companies are still willing to bite the potential tariff-laden bullet for a shot at the opportunity presented by American markets. That’s where we find ourselves with ZION.
A luxury display manufacturer from Spain, ZION mainly dabbles in microLED TVs with a particular emphasis on outdoor displays (though nothing’s stopping an installer from setting them up inside a house).
Technically they entered North America at the start of this year through a distribution partnership with Selective Design, but this will be the first time they’re making an appearance at a tradeshow stateside.
It’s interesting: microLED video walls were once an incredibly niche product (having first made the crossover from being a largely commercial display technology) within an incredibly niche industry, but I find that as each year passes, the category keeps on growing with new entrants like ZION.
Why integrators should take notice
The fact that ZION is entering into US markets shouldn’t be taken as the usual market entrant. Picture yourself as ZION. You deal with an incredibly premium product, one that costs a decadent sum of money. Now picture the current economic climate. Spain is facing a blanket 10% tariff on all goods imported into the US, with total costs at the border nowadays equating to roughly 20-30% of the shipment’s cost, insurance and freight.
That’s no small chunk of change when it comes to the product ZION is putting out. To me, it reads like ZION has a ton of confidence in what looks to be a growing category in the US at a time when there are enough headwinds to dissuade many other manufacturers from participating in the first place.
There’s plenty of reasons for that. One: the microLED market, for all its growth, remains relatively small. Two: even among the few players that do offer microLED options for integrators, even fewer have business models set up with custom integration (CI) in mind, with Just Video Walls being a prime example of a company built around the custom integration market.
Opportunity number one is easy enough to snag: ZION is arguably an early arrival to the space if we’re considering how recently video walls have entered “mainstream” popularity. That second one is going to be tricky though, and one that integrators will want to make note of as they explore opportunities with ZION moving forward. Something as big and complex as a video wall installation lives and dies on the support structure behind it.
If ZION wants to really make an impact in the category with integrators, they’re going to need to sell the installation instead of the product.
2. Rumors of LG Selling Its TV Business Greatly Exaggerated
Source: LG Slams Rumors on Sale of TV Business to Hisense as ‘Baseless’
There’s no shortage of drama in the residential TV business these days, both real and imagined. Let’s talk about that later aspect for a moment. LG recently had to bat away rumors that it was selling its TV business to competitor Hisense, and the company was not happy with having to elaborate on that.
Verbatim, in a statement provided to Android Authority, the company said this: “LG Electronics would like to state that this news regarding the potential sale of its TV business is completely baseless and therefore entirely speculative and misleading.” Like I said: they don’t sound too happy about having to elaborate on that.
The problem is that, while details regarding LG’s sale of its TV business to Hisense doesn’t have much context to stand on, there’s still plenty of precedence for a move like this happening in the TV category at large; two massive moves of the same magnitude happened earlier this year to Sony and Panasonic.
The news story that originally started the rumor has since been taken down, but it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle. With two major disruptions to the display market having already happened and TVs having a notorious reputation as an incredibly difficult product to profit from, there’s not a whole lot to keep people from speculating.
My point is, a lot of the discussion surrounding this smells like blood in the water as opposed to any meaningful curtain peeling.
Why integrators should take note
I’m not going to dive into the meta game of a company’s PR (whether they’re upset that it’s a lie or upset they didn’t get to announce the news when they wanted to). Instead, I’m going to treat it as LG is saying it is: that no sale is in the works. I’d like to instead talk about why this might even form as a rumor in the first place, and why people might hold onto it as a possibility despite the company in question refuting it.
Picture yourself an LG or Samsung customer. You see that Sony just sold its TV business to TCL (and Panasonic to SKYWORTH). Both are big moves that come out of nowhere. You’ve been hearing stories about how Chinese manufacturers have been eating into the market shares of industry giants. You know any loss of ground has big impacts on the bottom line for product with margins as razor thin as TVs.
First: what Sony’s sale represents is that even that even companies that are established as cornerstones of the industry aren’t permanent fixtures. Second: the sale introduces a whole new level of complexity to the relationship between buyer and manufacturer, because its not like Sony is gone completely. All it is a new business model for the company, a business model most people aren’t super familiar with, a business model that—because of that unfamiliarity—leaves some people with questions and concerns.
For integrators, that concern could be that the quality of the product suffers, or that service and support become more convoluted as more players get added into the mix. If that happens, what sort of recourse is there for someone who is often staking their reputation on these types of products?
If you’re a manufacturer like Sony, LG or Samsung (I pick those because they are BY FAR the most used TVs in CI) I would keep those concerns in consideration when working with integrators in the future, even if you’re not planning on selling your TV business any time soon. After all, service and support is a major differentiator for businesses working with the CI channel.
The Week in Playback is CE Pro’s weekly recap segment providing extra opinions and analysis on major news stories from across the custom integration (CI) and smart home industries, focusing on recent and breaking stories ranked on importance and interest to the professional install channel. Any opinions expressed here do not reflect the opinions of other editors or that of CE Pro as a whole.
