LeEco’s ‘Truly Disruptive’ Content Partnership Fails to Materialize on Launch Day

Not all went according to plan on LeEco’s debut day Wednesday for its LeMall.com e-commerce site, marking the U.S. debut of TVs and smartphones introduced Oct. 19 in San Francisco (see 1610190058). LeEco promised to trumpet the debut with the announcement of a “truly disruptive” content partnership that will “break all boundaries here in this country,” but the announcement hadn't materialized as of late afternoon Wednesday. "We'll provide details as soon as we can” on the content partnership, “but unfortunately, the lawyers got involved, so we're just waiting for final OK before we announce,” LeEco spokesman Greg Belloni emailed us Wednesday. Sources told us an announcement still was possible before the day was done on the West Coast. Other first-day surprises: (1) LeMall listed the 85-inch uMax85 Dolby Vision TV as sold out seconds after the site went live at 1 p.m. EDT. It says availability is expected for Nov. 21. LeEco had said first-day quantities of the uMax85 would be limited, but Belloni didn’t say how many were available or sold Wednesday. “We based our forecast for the uMax85 ecotv on 2015 85-inch 4K UHD television demand, and underestimated the interest in this screen size," Belloni said. "We are planning to have more units available later this month at the same LeRewards price" of $3,999, he said. IHS Markit estimates there were about 6,600 units of 85-inch 4K TVs shipped in the U.S. last year, including 3,700 in Q4 alone, nearly all from Samsung, Paul Gagnon, director of TV sets research, emailed us Wednesday. By late afternoon, all products in LeEco's introductory U.S. lineup were shown at LaMall as having been sold out, including two models of smartphones and three models of TVs, in addition to the uMax85.(2) LeEco's TV lineup will have DTS-HD digital surround technology and the Le S3 smartphone will have DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS said in a Wednesday announcement. But DTS representatives didn’t comment on why the DTS feature sets weren't disclosed at LeEco’s Oct. 19 launch event or why LeMall had no mention of DTS on those products Wednesday at the online store.