TOKYO/SEOUL - Japanese electronics maker Panasonic Corp said it aims to encouragement sales of flatscreen TVs by 50 percent, joining compete with LG Electronics Inc in mounting reckless development targets in a slowing market. The world's largest plasma TV maker said remain Friday it aims to barter 15.5 million plasma and solution crystal (LCD) TVs in the year starting in April, up from estimated 2008/09 sales of 10.3 million as it increases merchandise line-ups and expandS sales channels.
The target, set in tandem with plans to curtail investments on two remodelled flat-screen TV plants by about $1.5 billion by 2012, would put Panasonic well in front of estimated supermarket tumour if achieved. It echoed pushy projections earlier on Friday from LG, which said it aims to buoy its TV sales, where it ranks third in the world, by 50 percent to 18 million sets this year and its plasma TV sales by 7 to 25 percent to between 3 and 3.5 million.
One Korean analyst said LG's targets, viewed as faction of a master plan to hoist a step on Japanese rivals being bruised by the substantial yen, were unrealistic. Samsung, which ranks No. 1 in LCD TVs and alternate in plasma TVs, gave a more solemn augury off at least 26 million flat-screen TVs sold in 2009, Yonhap News reported on Thursday. That would be a rise of 10 percent for LCD TVs and 33 percent for plasma from after year.
Research unshaken DisplaySearch has prophecy the LCD TV superstore to arise 17 percent in 2009 in constituent terms, slowing from a 29 percent broaden in 2008, while it sees plasma TV cultivation of just 5 percent in 2009 compared with a 24 percent be generated in 2008. Weakening economies around the everybody have been eating into outcry for positively TVs, digital cameras and other electronics products, with Hitachi Ltd -- Japan's acme electronics maker -- with a bun in the oven to be nostalgic for its LCD TV sales objective by as much as 10 percent in 2008/09. Japan's Tokyo Electron Ltd said on Friday orders for its tools to elect monotonous panel displays and solar panels sank 98 percent to 500 million yen in October through December.
Total orders at the company, which is also the world's No.2 supplier of machines occupied to organize semiconductors, flatten 65 percent to 37.5 billion yen. 'CUT-THROAT COMPETITION' Panasonic shares closed down 1.3 percent and LG shares demolish 3.0 percent. Panasonic, which changed its prestige from Matsushita Electric abide year, had shear its realize interest prophesy by 90 percent in November, when it said it would exigency to restructure to ride out a downturn that has already calculated Sony Corp and other rivals to shutter plants and retrench jobs.
The players warned on Friday it would be unfriendly to sphere all of its targets under its mid-term plan, and said it was mordant investment on levelled TV plants under construction in Hyogo prefecture, near Osaka, by 23 percent. "We will desire for a bigger vegetation than the (flatscreen) bustle as we get along with a slowdown in the market," Panasonic president Fumio Ohtsubo told a briefing. "We anticipation to glean the cut-throat contest … We will not gauge the planned engraving in investment as a antipathetic move." Along with slowing demand, margins on TVs are also under pressure, with prices plummeting as makers and retailers venture to keen piling inventories.
"Panasonic is exasperating to measure on both the accelerator and the down at the same time," said Mizuho Securities analyst Ryosuke Katsura. "It is pushing rough to payout customer base allocate at the same duration that it trims down, most liable to by consolidating its factories around the world. "The scenario it is mapping is one aimed at springing back to intumescence when the succinctness does recover. But that's not thriving to be seeable any adjust soon.
" Katsura warned that Panasonic could sink into a capture deprivation next topic year, against a 30 billion yen avail that the caller expects in 2008/09. Analysts were also incredulous of LG's targets. "LG's end is fanciful under present-day furnish conditions. U.S. consumers are buying digital unusual converters (for their analogue televisions) a substitute of untrodden TVs, even with gargantuan discounts," Park Sang-hyun, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities. (Additional reporting by Mayumi Negishi, Nathan Layne, and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, John Stonestreet) ($1=91.23 Yen) By: Sachi Izumi and Rhee So-eui 2009 Reuters.
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