"Telly appeared on the home theater scene in 2023 with an unusual proposition. Its business model revolves around giving customers free dual-screen televisions where the lower screen shows non-stop advertisements. At the time, the start-up's execs projected that Telly would ship its first 500,000 screens that summer. However, Janko Roettgers of reported that Telly only had 35,000 sets in people's homes at the end of the third quarter of 2025."
"Personally, I don't think I'd want a free TV that perpetually pelts me with ads, but it seems Telly did in fact have some interest in its approach; the company reportedly had 250,000 pre-orders in June 2023. However, it ran into issues with getting those televisions to customers in one piece. The quarterly report allegedly said that 10 percent of Telly's shipments through FedEx arrived broken. A thread on the company's Reddit page from a year ago backs that up, chronicling delayed shipments and broken replacements."
Telly launched in 2023 offering free dual-screen televisions that display nonstop ads on the lower screen in exchange for the hardware. Executives initially projected shipping 500,000 units in summer 2023, and the company reportedly had 250,000 pre-orders by June 2023. By the end of Q3 2025, only about 35,000 sets were in homes, according to an investor update cited by Janko Roettgers. Fulfillment problems emerged: approximately 10 percent of FedEx shipments arrived broken, and customer reports on Reddit documented delays and damaged replacements. These operational and product issues undermined the ad-funded hardware model.
Read at Engadget
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]