LG seeks to corner a fifth of 3-D TV market

LG Electronics, the world's second-biggest maker of tele-visions, aims to raise its market share for 3-D televisions five-fold this year by pushing its technology for lightweight, battery-free glasses.The company will probably reach 20 per cent of the market for the devices by the end of 2011, up from 4 per cent at the beginning of the year, said Lee Kwan Sup, head of marketing for LG's home entertainment unit. Seoul-based LG aims to pass Samsung Electronics and become the world's top seller of 3-D televisions next year, it said in a statement yesterday. LG and competitors including Samsung and Toshiba are pushing 3-D to revive falling demand in major markets.Television shipments are set to decline through 2015 in Western Europe and Japan and stagnate in the US, market researcher IMS Research said.The market will total about 200 million TVs this year, with 3-D accounting for some 10 per cent, from 1 per cent last year, Lee estimated."If we make a strong push into this newly developing premium segment, we can set a trend and establish an image as an innovator," Lee said in an interview at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin. "This is a fortuitous cycle for us, and that's why we're really focusing on this 3-D technology."TVs capable of showing 3-D images normally command a 20 per cent premium over regular sets, he said. Sony on July 28 cut the sales forecast for its Bravia televisions by 19 per cent to 22 million units worldwide this year. Royal Philips Electronics said in April it would divest its 80-year-old television unit to a Hong Kong contract manufacturer. While LG's previously announced target of 40 million units for this year is "a stretch", the company is set to increase market share to more than 15 per cent from 12 per cent, Lee said. LG lowered its television sales goal to 32 million units, Edaily had reported on August 18, citing an unidentified company official. LG is betting on ‘Cinema 3D TVs' incorporating Film Patterned Retarder technology and using glasses that it says are lighter, more comfortable and less eye-straining. Philips and Toshiba are among other makers adopting the technology, developed by LG Display, while Sony is considering it, Lee said. LG aims to equip 70 per cent of its TVs with 3-D features and develop glasses-free models, according to the statement. The company also said it plans to start next year selling large-screen TVs using so-called OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, technology. A boost to television revenues may help LG make up for its shrinking stature in mobile-phone sales, where global market share by unit fell to 5.7 per cent in the second quarter from 8 per cent a year earlier, according to researcher Gartner.Television prices have fallen so much that a typical set will soon cost less than an Apple iPad that's less than a tenth the size. Average prices of 42-inch liquid-crystal-display TVs in the US will probably fall 10 per cent to $599 (Dh2,199) this quarter from a year earlier, and slip to $578 by the end of the year, according to California-based research firm DisplaySearch. The price drop illustrates why none of the industry's five- largest producers, including Samsung and Sony, have struggled to generate profits in their TV divisions since last year. Falling prices will likely continue pressuring earnings, said Jeff Loff, a Tokyo-based analyst at Macquarie Group. "Even incremental features like 3-D, internet connectivity and enhanced motion processing do not generate enough of a price lift to turn TV sets profitable." In the US, the first colour RCA-brand TV with 12-inch screen was offered at $1,000 in 1954. Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung, now the largest TV maker, began offering 40-inch LCD sets for about $8,000 in 2002. Sharp, Japan's largest LCD maker, retailed the company's first 45-inch sets in 2004 at 997,500 yen (Dh47,500). From / Gulf News