Television prices are shaped less by retail promotion than by the market for the panel inside. That component behaves like a commodity with its own cycle.
Panels come from a small number of factories
Display panels are produced in enormous plants that cost a great deal to build and are uneconomic to run below capacity, so output stays high once a plant is operating.
A handful of manufacturers supply panels to nearly every television brand, meaning sets from competing brands frequently share the same underlying display.
Brand differentiation therefore concentrates in processing, software and finish, since the panel itself may be common across the shelf.
Fixed capacity produces price swings
Because production cannot be adjusted quickly, supply and demand fall out of step regularly. Excess capacity pushes panel prices down sharply and shortages push them up just as fast.
Television makers buy panels months before sets reach shops, so today's retail prices reflect panel costs from an earlier point in the cycle.
This lag explains why television prices sometimes fall during periods when component costs are already rising again.
Larger sizes fall fastest
Panel plants are designed around a sheet of glass cut into a set of panel sizes, and the sizes that use the sheet most efficiently cost the least per unit of area.
As plants retool for larger formats, the previously premium size becomes the efficient one and its price drops considerably.
That is the mechanism behind the steady migration of the mainstream television upward in size over the last decade.
Retail promotion sits on top of the cycle
Seasonal discounts are real but modest compared with the movement in underlying panel costs, and they are timed to sales events rather than to component markets.
A television that seems unusually cheap outside a promotional period generally reflects a favourable panel purchase rather than a retailer's decision.
Manufacturers rarely explain the reason, since it undermines the impression that the discount was granted rather than passed through.
What this means for timing a purchase
Because prices track a component cycle, a model's price tends to fall steadily through its life rather than jumping at any single moment.
The largest reductions still cluster around the arrival of the following year's range, when the outgoing model must clear regardless of what panels now cost.
A buyer prepared to accept last year's model captures both effects at once, which is why that has remained the most reliable approach in the category.