Matsushita Aims to Double Share of Flat-TV Market

[Gregg Lengling]

Thu August 21, 2003 05:14 AM ET
OSAKA, Japan (Reuters) - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, the world's No.2 consumer electronics maker, said on Thursday it aimed to double its share of the fast-growing flat-panel television market by the 2005/06 business year.
Matsushita, maker of Panasonic products, had a 16 percent global market share in 2002/03, but wants to capture 30 percent within three years.

The company aims to boost its share of the liquid crystal display (LCD) TV market to 25 percent from 11 percent over the next three years and that of the plasma display panel (PDP) TV market to 30 percent from 22 percent, Tsutomo Ueda, an executive officer at Matsushita, told a news conference.

The push is part of Matsushita's effort to put its record loss in 2001/02 firmly behind it by focusing on profitable advanced products such as DVD recorders and big-screen PDP TVs.

The latest sales targets were given when the electronics giant unveiled 13 new flat-panel TVs in its newly named "Viera" series, to be launched in the domestic market this autumn.

The products range from 14-inch to 50-inch diagonal screen sizes and include three PDP TVs and 10 LCDs.

In 2002/03, the worldwide flat-panel TV market grew to 1.95 million units, compared to an overall TV market of 130 million units including conventional cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs, Matsushita said.

The number of flat-panel TVs is expected to reach four million this business year, and 13.9 million in 2005/06, which will account for about 10 percent of the total TV market, the company said.

The company plans to increase annual production capacity for flat-panel TVs and to raise its global sales of televisions overall to 700 billion yen ($5.93 billion) in 2005/06 from 530 billion yen in 2002/03.

Matsushita, which ranks second to Sony Corp in the consumer electronics sector, said it wants flat-panel TVs to account for more than 60 percent of its television sets in 2005/06, compared with below 20 percent in 2002/03.

Shares in Matsushita Electric closed down 0.74 percent at 1,478 yen, compared with a 0.69 percent increase in the Nikkei average.