Menlo Park, CA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 06/07/2007 -- Pacific Media Associates, the global market information experts on large-screen displays, reports that unit shipments of flat panel televisions and business displays 30-inches and larger in the United States jumped 36% for the first quarter of 2007, compared with the fourth quarter of 2006. Their Professional Flat Panel Display Americas Market Census also shows that in the Americas, LCD has taken a commanding lead over plasma, with a 60% unit share.

“Recently, we have seen noticeable ‘leakage’ of consumer products into professional applications, so it is good to see this healthy growth in the professional product segment,” according to Rosemary Abowd, Vice President with Pacific Media. “Most of the growth in the professional product sales has been in the 30- to 34-inch size segment, both in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas. A large portion of this results from the sale of LCD products into hospitality applications, especially for in-room entertainment.”

The unit sales for professional products in the Americas rose 51% over the first quarter of 2006, but while plasma sales have declined 11% year on year, LCD sales grew 178%. Taking the U.S. sales alone, LCD unit sales were up 190% year on year.

In the first quarter of 2007, LG Electronics remained the leader in professional large flat panel displays, with a 37.5% unit share in the Americas, up 3.5 unit share points from the fourth quarter of 2006. Panasonic was in second place for the quarter with a 15.4% unit share, down 2.9 unit share points from the previous quarter.

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 www.pacificmediaassociates.com