(Yicai) May 13 -- One week after Samsung announced its withdrawal from China’s home appliance market, Yicai visited several stores in different regions and found that retailers have already begun adjusting their operations. Some are offering discounts to offload inventory, while others have started dismantling Samsung display areas to make room for competing brands.

During a visit to a Samsung store in Beijing yesterday, Yicai found that all electrical appliances are still neatly displayed. However, one salesperson said, “If customers don’t buy now, they may not be able to later. At present, we are basically selling whatever is left in the warehouse. Some of the most popular products have already sold out."

Sales staff in different regions said that Samsung televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and garment care machines are currently being sold below their listed prices in order to speed up inventory clearance.

A retailer in eastern China said several of his Samsung stores are selling stock at discounts of between 5 percent and 10 percent. After the inventory is cleared, the Samsung display areas will be allocated to other brands.

A Samsung dealer of residential and commercial air conditioners in northwest China said, “We have already started to make room for other brands at our store and some of our top sales staff are also being reassigned.”

As of press time, Samsung’s flagship stores on major e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com were still operating normally, but some TV and refrigerator models were already showing limited availability, Yicai noticed.

Double Pressure

Samsung’s TV shipments in China peaked at 2.55 million units in 2014, but had fallen to fewer than 500,000 units by 2025, according to third-party data. In the first quarter, total sales of foreign TV brands in China, including Samsung, amounted to only around 200,000 units, representing a combined market share of less than 3 percent.

Samsung’s share of China’s TV market through offline channels sank 2.85 percentage points during the week May 4 to 10 from the year before to 2.94 percent, according to statistics from Chinese supplier of big data applications All View Cloud.

Shrinking demand for TVs in China and the rapid rise of leading domestic brands mean that Japanese and South Korean TV manufacturers are facing a survival crisis in China, and this pressure is likely to spread to more emerging markets in the next few years, Zhang Bing, a consumer electronics analyst at UK technology research firm Omdia, told Yicai.

China’s leading TV brands still face challenges in building premium products and services, especially in areas such as smart TV ecosystems and AI-powered television applications. Only by addressing these weaknesses can leading Chinese brands establish sustainable competitiveness in the global consumer electronics market, Zhang said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor