In this interview from CES 2024, ZEASN EMEA President Ronny Lutzi explains why the TV industry needs a competitive independent operating system, and what he’s doing to disrupt the industry at large.

Ronny Lutzi: As you know, we did the merger last year with our biggest competitor, and that makes us, at least by install base, the biggest independent player in the market for operating systems. And I believe that more than ever, the industry needs an independent operating system. And then there [are] a few trends in the industry that drive to that. 

So one trend basically is that we see that the TV sales market is under very much pressure. One reason is because the price is going down. – I think the prices in the last year have been going down, on average, by 16%. And then there is another thing, that even though the sales volume stayed pretty much stable, also that is going to change because it stayed stable because people were not necessarily exchanging their TV sets for new features. Most of them exchanged the TV set for bigger screens.

But the bigger screen will come to the natural end, and that is the living room size. So, when we started the business, the average TV was 32 inches. Maybe people can go to 65", 75", but that's probably the end of the ladder. So we are seeing a price decrease on the average retail price, and then we will see a lot more [of] a decrease also in the sales volume. And to that retail business, there is another trend that I'm seeing is that the cable operators have, for a few years now, tried to find the right medicine to stop cord-cutting and to re-own the glass, the glass in the living room. 

The guy that did that for example, now in the UK, as a first trial, instead of providing a setup box to the customer, they're providing a whole TV, right? And I think that was very successful for them. And I think more and more operators are going to do that because they want to get hold back of the living room because if they only provide a setup box, their setup box is in competition with, for example, the Samsung TV and its Tizen OS for the attention of the customer. And if you think that now every operator would start to give a TV with the subscription, that means one TV delivered by an operator means another TV less sold in the retail market, right?

So I think the retail market will get under high pressure, and the result of that is that all the TV brands, they need to find new ways of income sources, and the income source is the monetization of the viewing time, the monetization of the living room. And especially in the U.S., the U.S. operating systems are very good in that, but whatever money they make (and we already talked about that) they keep it for themselves. So there is nothing to win for the TV brands.

And we have a totally different system in that, because we have a long-term monetization participation for the TV brands, and give them the opportunity to sustain a business model outside of a pure hardware margin.