Banking on the growing momentum of flat-panel television sales, the nation's leading home appliance makers, Sampo Corp (聲寶) and Taiwan Kolin Co (歌林), are both gearing up to grab a larger slice of the market next year.
"Prices of panels have shown a stable decline of 10-15 percent this year, compared with the sharper 30 percent drop of the previous few years. This has prompted more consumers to cast off their wait-and-see mindset and get one of these TVs," Leo Liu (劉坤旺), executive vice president of Sampo, told reporters yesterday.
According to Liu, the liquid-crystal-display (LCD) TV market in Taiwan will grow to around 350,000 units next year, up from this year's 250,000 units. The plasma-display-panel (PDP) TV market, however, will remain flat at around 60,000 units next year.
The flat-panel TV sector consists of LCD and PDP TVs.
Strong consumer demand has resulted in a panel shortage this quarter, and the situation is set to continue over the next three months, he added.
According to Peter Chen (陳盛旺), vice president of the electronics device business unit, exports of Sampo LCD TVs are set to reach around 150,000 units next year, with plasma TVs hitting 100,000 units.
On the local front, the company aims to increase its share in the flat-panel market to 15 percent next year from 12.5 percent this year, which will then turn it into the No. 1 player, he added.
Currently, Matsushita Electric Industrial, which sells electronics under the Panasonic brand, leads in the local flat-panel TV segment, with Sampo coming in second. Kolin and Teco Electric & Machinery Co (東元) are both fighting for the No. 3 spot.
In a move to secure a larger share of the market, Sampo is banking on small-sized portable flat panel TVs next year, with varieties ranging from 3.5-10.2 inches.
Ideal for home entertainment and automobiles, these mobile TVs will be mass produced in the next quarter and will mainly be targeted at European markets, Chen said.
However, Kolin said it will not follow suit in trying to capture the portable TV market.
"Portable TVs compete directly with notebook computers and the market size is limited. We will continue to focus our efforts on larger LCD TVs in a bid to outmuscle others in the market," Steven Chen (陳世明), deputy general manager of the sales division, said on the sidelines of a product launch yesterday.
This was the reasoning behind the company's decision to withdraw from the portable TV market in the first half of last year, he added.
The efforts at pushing larger LCD TVs have been fruitful as its 32-inch models now contribute 30 percent to overall revenues, with products 37-inches and above making up another 30 percent.
The LCD TV segment, with the US as its largest market, has accounted for 50 percent of Kolin's total sales this year. It is forecast to grow to 60 percent next year, doubling this year's shipments to hit 600,000 units, he added.
"As plasma TVs still have unresolved technical issues, such as a shorter life cycle, high power consumption and high temperatures, we will opt to dedicate more resources to producing LCD TVs in order to achieve further growth," he said.
This time was supposed to be different. The memorychip sector, famous for its boom-and-bust cycles, had changed its ways. A combination of more disciplined management and new markets for its products — including 5G technology and cloud services — would ensure that companies delivered more predictable earnings. Yet, less than a year after memory companies made such pronouncements, the US$160 billion industry is suffering one of its worst routs ever. There is a glut of the chips sitting in warehouses, customers are cutting orders and product prices have plunged. “The chip industry thought that suppliers were going to have better control,” said
Enimmune Corp (安特羅生技) has obtained marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its EnVAX-A71 vaccine for enterovirus 71 (EV-71), becoming the nation’s first enterovirus vaccine completely made in Taiwan, it said yesterday. After spending 13 years and NT$1.5 billion (US$49.77 million) on the research and development of the vaccine, Enimmune plans to start manufacturing and marketing it by the end of March, the company said in a statement, without disclosing customer order figures. “It is possible that the vaccine would not be included in a national vaccination program initially, and consumers would need to pay for it themselves,” parent
Hon Hai Technology Group (鴻海科技集團), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) internationally, yesterday said it was confident that its performance would improve in the second half of this year. Investment plans related to electric vehicles (EVs) in different parts of the world are expected to gradually start coming to fruition, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told reporters after leading a new year’s prayer at the company’s headquarters in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城). Major challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war continue to affect the global economy. However, Liu said that he expects a turnaround in
‘BLUE OCEAN HIGHWAY’: The private cost of dredging is the main obstacle to having potentially thousands of new marine tourists make port calls, a marina operator said A company executive is betting big on marina development in Taiwan, as the government aims to boost the number of dedicated recreational yacht berths to 1,600 from 1,138 by 2025. Taiwan could make its dream of having thousands of sailboats and yachts make port calls in the country a reality by speeding up the construction of new marina berths, ARGO Yacht Club (亞果遊艇會) president Ho Yu-lin (侯佑霖) said. ARGO operates three marinas, in Kaohsiung, Penghu County and Tainan’s Anping District (安平). The 12-hectare Tainan Anping Yacht City is a members-only yacht club providing an array of amenities including restaurants and a hotel resort