At the seventh place, LeTV was the only internet TV brands that made it to the top-10 over the research period. Other internet TV brands such as Xiaomi and CooCaa dropped out of the rankings.

Analysis of data collected from China's most influential social network platform Sina Weibo further showed that Chinese Internet TV brands LeTV and Xiaomi fell into the category of "mainstay products with high reviews" while the foreign brand LG and Chinese traditional brands Hisense and Skyworth belonged to the category of "niche products with high reviews."

"It is noteworthy that Xiaomi and LeTV were highly mentioned online but their brand sentiment rates were lower than traditional TV brands LG, Hisense and Skyworth," says MIC research team.

"This indicates that although those internet TV brands seemed to have higher brand awareness, more time and efforts are required for them to gain a higher degree of trust from internet users."

Meanwhile, the majority of LCD TV shoppers in China were men aged between 25 and 34, with most of them living in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

Figure 1