Hisense Group is a Chinese multinational white goods and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Radio engineer Zhou Houjian founded the company as his own in 1969. The Hisense state-owned holding company has subsidiaries that include two listed companies, Hisense Visual Technology Co., Ltd. and Hisense H.A., listed in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Hisense retails products under several brand names. These include Hisense, Toshiba, Gorenje, Kelon and Ronshen.Hisense is also an OEM, so some of the products it makes are sold to other manufacturers and carry a brand name not related to Hisense. The main products of Hisense are televisions; their first TV model CJD18 was produced in 1978. It has invented a type of transparent television in 2013. In 2015 it acquired the right to sell televisions in the Americas using the brand name of the Japanese firm Sharp.In 2020, it introduced the world's first true 8K 10 bit HDR screen TV that is based on an AI-powered HDR algorithm and an image quality engine claiming 6.5T supercomputing power. Hisense Group has more than 80,000 employees world-wide, as well as 14 industrial parks, some of which are located in Qingdao, Shunde, Huzhou, Czech Republic, South Africa and Mexico. There are also 18 R&D centers located in Qingdao, Shenzhen, the United States, Germany, Israel, and more. In September 1969, Qingdao No.2 Radio Factory, the predecessor of Hisense Group, was established. This is the year its existence was first officially recognized. The small factory's first product was a radio sold under the brand name Red Lantern, but the company later acquired the know-how to make TVs through a trial-production of black and white televisions ordered by the Shandong National Defense Office.This involved the technical training of three employees at another Chinese factory, Tianjin 712, and resulted in the production of 82 televisions by 1971 and the development of transistor TVs by 1975. Television production in China was limited until 1979 when a Beijing meeting of the Ministry of Electronics called for greater development of the civil-use electronics industry. Qingdao No.2 Radio Factory was then quickly merged with other local electronics makers and began to manufacture televisions under the name Qingdao General Television Factory in Shandong province. In November 2017, Hisense announced that it would acquire a 95% controlling stake in Toshiba Visual Solutions for US$113 million. In 2018, Hisense became the majority shareholder in Slovenian appliance manufacturer Gorenje with 95.4% of shares.
