I bought a TV about a year ago. Sony is just not competitive anymore. Their processing/tuning is indeed good, but you can only tell the difference really on Blu-ray discs which nobody uses anymore. That's not really worth paying ~2-3x the price of say a TCL TV which may have better specs on things people can actually notice like HDR brightness. OLED is a much smaller market to begin with, the difference between OLEDs and LEDs are shrinking in every direction, both the pros and cons, and Sony runs into the same issue when compared to LG and Samsung's offerings.They still are/were...
A little history from my understanding.
They basically missed the boat on flat panels because of their dominance with the Trinitron CRT line (and Wega which became Bravia).
On top of this, all Japanese manufacturers made a wrong bet that the superior picture quality of Plasma would beat LCD... In case you didn't realize, it didn't. LCD quality was good enough and much thinner/lighter/cheaper... Where are Pioneer and Panasonic TVs now? Basically a preview of what was to come.
Koreans made a big bet in the 90's to throw all in on LCD. Soon they basically took over the computer monitor market all to themselves. Japanese companies were the early leaders in LCD, but did not scale the technology to meet the cost. LG and Samsung soon grew the panel size to take on the TV market. In the background, Taiwanese and mainland companies lurked to create lower cost panels.
Sony soon had to source their panels from Samsung (another "Joint Venture") which eroded their profit margin. As a result, they pushed further into the high end and soon abandoned the mass market.
The Koreans made another bet to go all in on OLED. In the meanwhile Chinese LCDs improved in quality significantly. Sony would source OLEDs from LG for the highest end XBR lines (Their brand for their highest end TVs dating back to CRT) and LCDs from Chinese suppliers like TCL/CSOT for their mid-range models. Sony maintained their own tuning/processing which is still considered the best in the market.
However, this niche is too small. The Chinese makers have invested in building their own brands significantly. Hisense and TCL have made huge inroads and have taken over that upper mid-range. Hisense is threatening with even greater confidence, selling multiple products in the >$5000 display category including Laser projectors and a $30,000 MicroLED TV. LG has a good chunk of the premium market for themselves, and if not selling their own brand, supplies all the large format OLEDs to the other brands. What room is left for Sony? They must have seen the writing on the wall themselves.
Source(s): Trust me bro
In short, their market is TVs that cost significantly more than the competitor for a difference only barely noticeable to a tiny group of people and only on a medium that very few people use. It has its uses as a halo product for a mass market brand, but it can't stand on its own.
