World sports events to drive flat-screen TV sales, Toshiba says

The demand for these flat-screen sets is expected to jump from 1.6 million units last year to about 2 million by the end of this year. About half of the demand will be for LED sets, which are LCD units back-lit by light-emitting diodes. 

Competition in this market will become more severe, Toshiba says. 

The company expects to increase its share of Thailand’s LCD TV market from 16 per cent currently to more than 20 per cent by the end of the year, making Toshiba a strong top-three leader.

The Euro 2012 soccer tournament began yesterday and runs until July 1, closely followed by the London Olympics from July 27 to August 12. If overall demand for LCD/LED sets reaches 2 million as expected, that would account for more than half of the overall TV market this year.

“We expect the overall LCD TV market to increase by more than 30 per cent from June to August because of the world’s sport events,” said Ratchaneewan Singprasert, group marketing manager.

She said the LCD/LED TV market had already been enjoying healthy growth, surging from 1.2 million units in 2010 to 1.6 million units last year.

“To be in line with the market trend, we will increase the number of our LED TV models from eight to 18 this year, while the number of LCD TV models will be reduced from nine models currently to only four,” Ratchaneewan said. 

She said demand for LED TVs had a tendency to increase significantly in Thailand as consumers here have relatively high technological knowledge.

Yukiharu Adachi, president of Toshiba Thailand, said it was enjoying continuous growth in its audio-visual business. 

“It is certain that competition in the market is becoming more and more severe, and we target our audio-visual sales for fiscal year 2012 to increase by at least 30 per cent. We realise that the marketing of football has become an increasingly important issue, and Toshiba will launch a promotional campaign and new commercials during this period to generate more revenue from the sport,” he said.

Adachi said the company was introducing the Toshiba 55RZ1, the first large-screen glasses-free three-dimensional television in Asia, smart TV, and the latest Power TV series of LED TVs, all integrating a new Regza engine that offers clearer pictures and superb sound quality. The new series are designed to deliver maximum performance with minimum power consumption, all featuring a slim and eye-catching design, he said. 

Nattaphong Areekul, vice president of Toshiba Thailand, said it had budgeted more than Bt500 million for marketing this year, of which about Bt150 million will be used to promote audio-visual products.