Plasma lost more ground; LCD now has half the share of 50”-54” segment

Menlo Park, CA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/18/2008 -- Pacific Media Associates, the global market information experts on large-screen displays, reports that unit sales for flat panel HDTV televisions in North America grew by 27% in December over November’s sales, marking a seasonal sales surge for the end of the year. Their Consumer Flat Panel Display Sell-Through Tracking Service also shows that consumers moved toward buying larger size models.

“One important development in December was that plasma models continued to lose ground to LCD,” according to Rosemary Abowd, Vice President with Pacific Media. “LCD already dominates the market below 45”, but in December, LCD took 50% of the larger 50” to 54” size segment. Plasma’s unit share dropped to 17% in December, which is its lowest point in the history of our sample. We have not seen the impact of the new, larger capacity LCD plants that will start to come online later in 2008, which should only increase LCD’s competitive position in the larger sizes.”

The average street price for all units sold in December in the report sample declined by just 1% over the average for November. This result might appear to be in conflict with the result that 17 of the top 20 best-selling units fell by as much as 10% or more from November’s pricing. The 1080p 45”-49” LCD segment average price fell by 10%, and was second behind 1080p 40”-44” LCD as the most popular segment on a unit basis. The conclusion from this is that consumers took advantage of lower prices to step up to larger sizes than they bought in November.

December ended with greatly reduced inventories compared with November, falling below the October 2007 levels. This is still a sizeable inventory, as retailers were already building up for holiday sales in October. As a result, it remains to be seen whether January’s Super Bowl sales were sufficient to bring inventories down to a manageable level for the spring when seasonal expectations predict slower sales.

Samsung had seven of the top ten best-selling models in December, including the top selling LNT4661F 1080p 46” LCD HDTV with an average street price of $1,531, down 15% from its November price. This helped drive Samsung to the top spot in both unit share with 29.6%, and revenue share with 32.2%.

Note: Data cited here is based on a sample of retailers and resellers, and is subject to sampling error.

About Pacific Media Associates
Pacific Media specializes in global display market information, covering all large-screen display categories: front projectors, plasma and LCD TVs, and rear-projection displays. Their Large-Screen Displays Industry Service family of publications provides detailed worldwide quarterly updates (sell-in data and forecasts) on large-screen display markets, newsletters on new products and other key industry developments, monthly advertised price tracking, ad hoc analyses, and annual Web surveys of North American end users (including organizations and individual consumers) and both North American and EMEA resellers/retailers. Their Large-Screen Displays Tracking Service family of monthly reports offers timely sell-through data and analysis on unit sales, true volume-weighted street prices, and inventories of large-screen displays sold by leading North American retailers, resellers, and distributors. Pacific Media Associates was established by Dr. William Coggshall, who was previously a co-founder of Dataquest and helped start the syndicated high-tech market information business. The company headquarters is at 1060 Siskiyou Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Telephone +1 650-561-9020 http://www.pacificmediaassociates.com