Metz is back, and blue...
Remember Metz, the premium television brand? Well it’s back (actually, in Germany it never went away), and the brand is currently in the throes of going global with a new affordable premium brand, ‘Metz blue’.
‘Metz blue’ is to be “powered by German engineering”, but it also has the monumental market power of China’s Skyworth behind it. Skyworth is “one of the brands who are no. 1 in China” as Metz CEO Dr Norbert Kotzbauer put it tactfully at the IFA press conference (where TCL and Hisense were both also presenting). Skyworth is huge — it expects to sell a million Android TVs globally in 2019, operating out of Shenzen with 40,000 employees, a corporate value of US$19bn, US$6.2bn revenue in 2018, global capacity to produce for 18m TVs a year, etc, etc, in addition to developing a full suite of TV technology — AI imaging, Dolby Vision, all the trimmings.
And since Skyworth is the 100% shareholder of Metz Consumer Electronics, the combination now has plans to take the Metz brand global.
Metz Consumer Electronics is, of course, far smaller than Skyworth — it has 160 employees operating out of Zimdorf, Bavaria. But Metz has something Skyworth does not — a reputation for German-made premium televisions. And history too — Metz has been operating since 1938, 50 years before Skyworth (still a private brand, though listed on the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange) was even formed.
So Skyworth is now developing a global strategy based on four television brands:
• Metz classic, with the familiar red Metz logo, as its premium brand;
• Metz blue as an affordable premium level;
• Skyworth’s own brand, as the high value offering;
• and below that, ‘Coocaa’, a youthorientated brand which is sold in China only online — indeed it is as much an e-commerce platform as a TV brand.
One big announcement at the IFA GPC was that the classic Metz (red) will be introduced to China during 2019. How will those 160 employees in Bavaria churn out enough TVs to satisfy China? We asked Dr Norbert after the event — but of course the China-bound models will be produced by Skyworth, with Metz’s input on design and production — all of which is still under discussion, so no more can yet be said, reported Dr Norbert. We thought this might be a hint towards OLED Metz TVs potentially employing OLED panels from China’s BOE (as suggested by OLED-info), and while some BOE/Skyworth OLEDs do seem to have entered the China market in 2017, Dr Norbert later confirmed to us that the Metz OLEDs will use LG.Display panels; indeed LG.D is a strategic partner of Skyworth, a relationship that goes back to at least 2005 in LCD panel cooperation.
And Metz blue is going increasingly global. The new brand entered central, eastern and south-eastern Europe in 2018 (the European TVs are manufactured in Poland), it recently entered India and Hong Kong, and has just launched in South Korea.
“Other markets will surely follow!” declared Dr Norbert, and Australia was shown on their roadmap. Dr Norbert told us that previously when Metz was on our shores the local distributor was asking for larger models to suit our larger homes, back when Metz was producing only 43-inch and 50-inch models. With the weight of Skyworth now behind the Metz blue, the new brand should have little difficulty in delivering its stated core aim to produce “reliable, smart, connected, user-friendly” TVs in whatever size the market demands.
More info: www.metzblue.com
We were among the first to review Warwick Acoustics’ initial product, the Model One, a pair of headphones which introduced an innovative new electrostatic driver using only a back grid of stainless steel mesh instead of the usual pair, and with a diaphragm tightened across a series of large open cells, like individual drums. Called the Sonoma Model 1, this clever design and its revelatory performance in particular saw our Sound+Image 2019
Headphone Innovation Award heading to the company’s HQ in Nuneaton, UK.
Now Warwick Acoustics has used HIGH END 2019 in Munich to launch a new flagship integrated headphone system, the ‘Aperio’ (from the Latin, meaning ‘to reveal’). Combining a new driver unit with the headphones, the Aperio is described as a reference studio monitor headphone system for high-resolution audio recording, mixing mastering and production applications.
But it’s also suited to the home as a standalone full-function pre-amplifier, operating as a DAC for digital inputs but also having analogue and network connectivity. And it again uses Warwick’s electrostatic transducer technology, the Balanced-Drive High Precision Electrostatic Laminate (BD-HPEL) transducer, as developed for the Sonoma M1.
Not inexpensive, mind, at $40,000. Anyone interested should contact the distributor BusiSoft AV direct: www.busisoft.com.au