Last December flat-panel HDTV sales grew 27% according to a new report from Pacific Media Associates. The report showed that LCD is slowly taking plasma's marketshare. LCD already dominates the market when it comes to smaller sizes, but LCD is now also growing in the larger segment. Last December LCD took 50% of the market share in the 50-54 inch segment.
Rosemary Abowd, a Pacific Media VP, said that plasma's unit share dropped to 17% for the month. Samsung was a winner with selling seven of the top-ten best selling models in December.
What do you think? Will LCD continue this way, or will plasma take back its share?
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After recently signing the joint venture deal with Hitachi, Pansonic is going to release big screen LCD's in addition to it's big screen Plasmas.
Until now, Pansonic has had only small screen LCD's, and big screen Plasmas (there was no overlap in model sizes).
The roadmap for LCD shows that it would be cheaper than Plasma. Plasma has some technical advantages over LCD, but price-wise, LCD has a brighter future. So I think that from now on, Panasonic would turn Plasma into a premium high end product, and not a mainstream one.
Panasonic is one of the biggest and most dominant producer of Plasma screens, so its moves would certainly effect all the industry, and others would follow them.
Personally, if I hadn't seen the new prototype from the Pioneer "Project Kuro" - Full HD 50" size, 9mm thick and with an infinite contrast - I wouldn't have thought that Plasma has any prospect at all. But after seeing it - I think that plasma still has great technical potential. The only big problem could be its price.
This message was edited at: 16-02-2008 14:42
By
normalicy (guest),
Sat 16 Feb 2008 20:30
Half the problem is that manufacturers aren't making as many plasmas avaliable for purchase. I usually see 3 LCD TVs for sale to every 1 Plasma & that is just 42" & up category. I really don't understand why anyone would be able to tolerate LCDs myself. The display quality is noticably inferior, especially at off angles.