Grundig and Beko: what they ship with and what comes off

Grundig sounds like Nuremberg and Beko like Istanbul, and both belong to the same company: Arçelik A.Ş., of the Koç group. It is the same case as Toshiba and Vestel, with one difference you can measure. Vestel builds televisions and rents other people's names. Arçelik bought the names, and televisions are 4.8% of what it invoices.

The group's report, and its footnote#

The 2025 integrated report lists 22 brands: Arçelik, Beko, Whirlpool, Grundig, Hotpoint, Arctic, Ariston, Leisure, Indesit, Blomberg, Defy, Dawlance, Hitachi, VoltasBeko, Singer, Elektrabregenz, Flavel, Bauknecht, Privileg, Altus, Ignis and Polar. And it breaks revenue down by segment: consumer electronics is TL 25,224 million out of TL 523,933 million, 4.8%. In units, 1,184,483 out of 36,450,093, or 3.2%. Arçelik is a washing machine and fridge company that also makes televisions.

There is a footnote next to Grundig worth reading in full:

"The Grundig brand has been exclusively licensed to Changhong International Holding (HK) Limited for selected product groups in selected countries outside Türkiye, for a period of three years starting from 1 January 2026, with an option to extend for an additional two years."

So the brand Arçelik bought has, since 1 January 2026, been licensed to China's Changhong, the owner of CHiQ. The transition "will continue until no later than 31 December 2026". Grundig has just crossed from one category into the other.

Bought or licensed: the difference is who signs#

Every television sold in the European Union is registered in EPREL under the name of the responsible company. Downloading by brand and noting the registrant's legal name gives this:

brand      declared  downloaded  registrant's legal name
Grundig         674         297  BEKO EUROPE MANAGEMENT S.R.L.
Beko              9           9  BEKO EUROPE MANAGEMENT S.R.L.
Arcelik           0           0  none
Altus             0           0  none
Dawlance          0           0  none

All 306 records, without a single exception, are signed by the same company. That is the difference from a licensed brand: for Telefunken or JVC the registrant list is a different importer in each country, and for Luxor there is even a Swedish retail chain declaring itself the manufacturer. Here there is only one name.

The first two columns do not match, and there is no trick to it: the EPREL API returns the declared total, but pagination does not walk it and the ceiling is 50 unique records per query. Splitting the query by the filters that are real (energyClass, energyClassHDR, panelTechnology and voiceAvailable) gets you to 297 out of 674 on Grundig. For Beko all nine are there, because nine is all there is.

Nine. Beko has nine televisions in Europe#

All nine date from this year: three 50/55/75 BHU 7800 in LED, three 50/55/65 BCQ 8000 in QLED and three 50/55/75 BIQ 8000, also QLED. The oldest entered the market on 11 June 2026 and the newest on 19 August. Grundig, by contrast, has not one record dated 2026: the last is from 2025.

The odd part is that those nine are not on the website. Searching for BHU 7800 on beko.com returns "No se han encontrado resultados" in Spain and "Keine Ergebnisse gefunden" in Germany, and BCQ 8000 returns "Nessun risultato trovato" in Italy. The Beko sites for Spain, Germany, Italy and Portugal have no television category at all: washing machines, ovens and fridges.

Grundig does sell them, and not everywhere. On grundig.com there are televisions on the Spanish site (smart-tv, qled, uhd, full-hd, hotel-tv), the Portuguese one (oled, ultra-hd) and the French one. On the German and Italian sites, none. The Spanish UHD category links two GIQ 8900B pages that return 404.

And grundig.es is still dead: the domain is registered, with its name servers at Nominalia, but it has no A record, no AAAA and no MX. curl answers "Could not resolve host" and www.grundig.es returns NXDOMAIN outright.

Who answers if it breaks#

Each site's legal footer names a different company, and every one of them belongs to the same group:

• Spain: "Política de privacidad del sitio web de Beko Electronics España S.L." on grundig.com, and "BEKO SPAIN ELECTRONICS, S.L." on beko.com.
• Germany: the Grundig Impressum gives Beko Germany GmbH, Rahmannstraße 3, Eschborn, HRB 128781 at the Frankfurt court. The body text on the same page says "Beko Grundig Deutschland GmbH".
• Portugal: Beko Home Appliances Portugal, Unipessoal, Lda.
• Italy: Grundig Italy s.r.l.
• Türkiye: Arçelik Pazarlama A.Ş. and Arçelik A.Ş.

All five texts name "our parent company Arçelik A.S. in Turkey". There is no third party: no Vestel Holland B.V., which is who answers for Toshiba and Telefunken, and no licensing agency. That is what a bought brand means.

The exception is France, where the Grundig privacy policy is in English and says "This site is made available by Grundig Appliances (PTY) LTD". "(PTY) LTD" is a South African company form.

Same factory, different name#

The European fiche for the 55 OLED GG970B, from 2022, gives the supplier as "Arctic S.A, Gaesti, Dambovita, 13 Decembrie Street, No 210, Romania". The one for the 55 GIQ 8900B, from 2024, gives "Beko Romania S.A. Gaesti, Dambovita District, 13 Decembrie Street, No. 210, Romania". Same street, same number, different name.

Which system each range runs#

Check this before touching anything, because there are three different systems. Of the 297 Grundig records downloaded, 73 carry "Fire TV Edition" in the model identifier itself: the GFB, GUB, GUT, GUW, VLX and VLE series, and on a Fire TV none of the Android TV guides apply. The rest splits between Android TV (the GFU line) and Google TV (GHU, GIQ and the Turkish catalogue).

The filter on grundig.com.tr today counts 59 Google TV models and 13 Android TV. And beko.com.tr sells Android TV on the two entry models and Google TV on everything above.

The update years read clearly too. Grundig declares seven years on 196 records and eight on 100, and the cut is chronological: anything placed on the market up to 2022 promises seven, anything from 2023 promises eight. None of the 73 Fire TV sets reaches eight. And the nine 2026 Bekos, signed by the same company that signs the eight-year Grundigs, declare seven.

Four brands, no platform of their own#

This site's directory keeps the device each television reports, taken from Google Play's supported devices list: 2,228 televisions, 439 brands, 222 platforms.

Grundig appears in 14 rows and nine platforms. Beko in 15 rows and ten. Arcelik in 14 and Altus in eight. Not one of the four has a single platform to itself. That is not unusual: 401 of the 439 brands are in the same position. What is unusual is having all of them shared with the sister brands.

platform    brands  who else is on it
akropoli         3  Arcelik, Beko, Grundig
wanchai          3  Arcelik, Beko, Grundig
aberdeen         4  Arcelik, Beko, Grundig, Dawlance
awaza            4  Altus, Arcelik, Beko, Grundig
sinchon          4  Altus, Arçelik, Beko, Grundig
millbrae         5  + ARGUEST
kunyang          6  + ARGUEST and Singer
shinagawa       18  Aiwa, Sharp, Skyworth, Tesla...
martin          46  JVC, Blaupunkt, Hyundai, Schneider...

Dawlance and Singer are group brands, both on the report's list of 22. And in the three martin rows, the 46-brand platform, the marketing name the set reports is literally Turkey.

The Turkish sites finish the demonstration without meaning to. The catalogues of beko.com.tr and arcelik.com.tr are the same set model for model, one letter apart: B 632 C and A 632 C, B 743 C and A 743 C, B 1265 C AI and A 1265 C AI.

The practical part#

If Grundig, Beko, Arcelik and Altus share a platform, one brand's package list works for the others. What you look at is not the logo:

adb shell getprop ro.product.device

If it does not answer, it is a Fire TV or not Android at all, and this page is not for you. If it does, look up whatever comes back in the directory.

Goes without thinking: the streaming apps you do not use, the free content channels and the shop demo modes. Look first: com.google.android.tvrecommendations, which clears the home screen and also empties the "continue watching" row. Leave alone: com.google.android.gms, the launcher, and anything starting with com.android. you cannot identify.

All of it is reversible: a disabled package comes back with one command.

If you have one#

Send the output of getprop ro.product.device with the brand and model. The nine European Bekos have no entry in Google's list yet, and two replies would settle which platform they are on. The same mechanism under other names is in Grundig and Telefunken and in JVC, Blaupunkt and Hyundai.