Walmart didn’t buy Vizio to help the TV brand. It bought the TV brand to help itself. And its going to have an impact on the whole industry.
Walmart just bought Tv Maker Vizio for $2.3 billion. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if you just scrolled right past that particular headline when the news dropped on February 20. I am not here to try to convince you that you should care.
But I do think that you’re going to want to know what’s about to happen to your smart TV, no matter what brand it is.The ripple effect
OK, so Walmart bought Vizio. Big deal.
Well, yeah, actually, it is literally a big deal. One worth more than $2 billion. That alone tells us something.
And while I understand some folks who are really into TVs — myself included — may be curious about what that means for Vizio TVs in the future, I don’t think that’s nearly as interesting as what Walmart could do through Vizio TVs. And perhaps more important is what the ripple effect will likely be across every smart TV platform.
It doesn’t matter whether you own a Vizio TV, Roku TV, Google TV, Fire TV, Samsung TV, or LG TV. What Walmart is about to do could have a profound effect on your TV-watching experience at home.
And I’m about to make that very real for you.
Oh, and if you own an Apple TV (which is a peripheral and not actually a TV …), you may be safe — for now. But we’ll get back to that.Follow the money
So, we’re going to kick this off by doing what one should always do when a market-shifting event happens. Let’s follow the money!
Vizio has a storied history. It grew pretty quickly. In 2006, it brought in about $700 million and nearly tripled that in just one year to an estimated $2 billion in revenue. In 2014 and 2015, Vizio then pulled off a couple of big acquisitions that helped make its SmartCast smart TV platform what it is today. That’s going to be important in a minute.
In 2015, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought charges against Vizio, claiming it was collecting non-personal data on its TV owners and selling it to advertisers, all without ever disclosing that to its customers.
Vizio in 2017 had to delete all that data and pay a $2.2 million fine. But consumers apparently weren’t too upset about it, because Vizio kept on selling TVs. Lots of TVs.
In 2015, a now-defunct Chinese brand called LeEco almost bought Vizio for $2 billion dollars. China blocked that, so it didn’t happen. But Vizio continued to sell TVs. That’s lots of TVs going into people’s homes.
In fact, right up through 2020, Vizio was the No. 2-selling TV brand in the U.S. Since then, Vizio fell to the number 4 or 5 slot, depending on which report you reference.
Why does this matter? It tells us that Vizio’s status as a TV brand has fallen quite a bit in the last three years. Now, one could understandably think that meant that Vizio needed help — and maybe it did. But I don’t think Walmart showed up to help Vizio. I think what’s happening here is that Vizio is going to help Walmart. In fact, its press release announcing the acquisition pretty much made that clear.
While Vizio’s sales may have slipped over the past few years, it still put a massive number of TVs into homes across the U.S. over the past decade. And because folks still don’t replace their TVs all that often, Vizio has some 18.
