Smart TVs are also much more valuable to business as tracking and advertising vectors than ever before, so there’s a lot of incentive to keep them cheap.

It’s not mentioned in the article, but I have to wonder how much the logistics of distributing lighter, thinner TVs has helped bring the prices down as well. Old CRTs, as we all know, weighed as much as a small neutron star and took up an order of magnitude more space for the same screen size compared to flat-panel models, which logically means you can fit more on the same truck, train, or plane.