Plasma and LCD sales skyrocket in the last quarter

According to two global surveys made by two different market research firms there has never been a better moment to be a plasma or LCD TV manufacturer. The sales of both plasma and LCD TV sets increased sensibly in the last quarter of year and projections for the last part of the 2006 show even more positive trends.

The first research, released by DisplaySearch, revealed that worldwide in the April-to-June quarter the sales of plasma televisions increased by 95 percent and accounted for 20 percent of the global TV revenues. LCDs sales instead rose even more (135 percent) and accounted for 22 percent of the revenues.

Speaking of single brands in the Plasma market Panasonic “beat” the competition for the eight consecutive quarter obtaining a 28.3 percent share of the total number of sales. Well behind there is LG Electronics (17.1 percent share), followed by Samsung (13.6) and Philips (10.3).

As for the LCDs Philips and Samsung were the two best companies for number of units sold but Sony beat them when it came to revenues in the last quarter. In this sector however the race is a lot more open because the first four companies (Sharp being the fourth) have similar figures both for units and revenue.

The trend in revenues with LCDs surpassing Plasma confirms the impression that in a not so distant future LCDs will have the edge. The Plasma technology has some disadvantages compared to LCDs and the fact that the latters are >closing the size gap could move even more users toward a LCD.

The second research, revealed by IDC, reports that by the end of the year the sales of plasma and LCD television could triple and that more and more sales are driven by the availability of HD and the decreasing costs.

The positive outlook of a rising market will certainly convince the big players to invest even more in quality by trying at the same time to keep the prices low. This means that it’s true that this is a big period for the manufactures but the same can be said for us, the buyers, right?