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December HDTV Sales Jumped 27%
By Dale Cripps
Founder & Co-Publisher
Posted on February 14, 2008
Category: Marketplace
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Menlo Park, California, USA - February 14, 2008. Pacific Media Associates, the global market information experts on large-screen displays, reports that unit sales for flat panel HDTV televisions in North America grew by 27% in December over November's sales, marking a seasonal sales surge for the end of the year. Their Consumer Flat Panel Display Sell-Through Tracking Service also shows that consumers moved toward buying larger size models.

"One important development in December was that plasma models continued to lose ground to LCD," according to Rosemary Abowd, Vice President with Pacific Media. "LCD already dominates the market below 45", but in December, LCD took 50% of the larger 50" to 54" size segment. Plasma's unit share dropped to 17% in December, which is its lowest point in the history of our sample. We have not seen the impact of the new, larger capacity LCD plants that will start to come online later in 2008, which should only increase LCD's competitive position in the larger sizes."

The average street price for all units sold in December in the report sample declined by just 1% over the average for November. This result might appear to be in conflict with the result that 17 of the top 20 best-selling units fell by as much as 10% or more from November's pricing. The 1080p 45"-49" LCD segment average price fell by 10%, and was second behind 1080p 40"-44" LCD as the most popular segment on a unit basis. The conclusion from this is that consumers took advantage of lower prices to step up to larger sizes than they bought in November.

December ended with greatly reduced inventories compared with November, falling below the October 2007 levels. This is still a sizeable inventory, as retailers were already building up for holiday sales in October. As a result, it remains to be seen whether January's Super Bowl sales were sufficient to bring inventories down to a manageable level for the spring when seasonal expectations predict slower sales.

Samsung had seven of the top ten best-selling models in December, including the top selling LNT4661F 1080p 46" LCD HDTV with an average street price of $1,531, down 15% from its November price. This helped drive Samsung to the top spot in both unit share with 29.6%, and revenue share with 32.2%.

Posted by Dale Cripps, February 14, 2008 02:10 PM

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About Dale Cripps

Dale Cripps is a professional journalist who has focused two thirds of his career on the subject of high-definition television. Upon completing his education in business and service in the military he formed Cripps and Associates, South Pasadena, California, in 1964, which operated as a market-development company for aerospace services. In 1983 he turned to television and began what has become a 20 year campaign to pioneer HDTV. For fifteen of those years he published the well-regarded HDTV Newsletter (an international monthly written for television professionals). During much of this same time he also served as the HDTV-Technical Editor for "Widescreen Review Magazine." On November 16, 1998 he launched the Internet distributed HDTV Magazine, which remains the only consumer publication devoted exclusively to high-definition television. In April of 2002 he co-founded with Tedson Meyers of Coudert Bros, the High-definition Television Association of America, which is presently based in Washington DC. Cripps is the president of this organization. Mr. Cripps is a charter member of the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers and honored by that organization with the DTV Press Leadership Award of 2002. He makes his home in Oregon.