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December 4, 2008 12:45 PM PST

Premium LCD TV brands slash prices to compete for holiday shoppers

by Erica Ogg
  • 8 comments

Black Friday retail results were a pleasant surprise for retailers this year, with sales inching up slightly from the same day last year. A big part of that was the heavy discounting designed to attract consumers.

LG LCD TV

This LG 32LG30 LCD TV was discounted 33 percent in the lead-up to the holiday shopping season.

(Credit: LG Electronics)
TV makers were no exception. But the discounts on LCD TVs were heaviest from the premium names in the business--Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Philips, LG, and Toshiba.

That's according to market research firm iSuppli, which reported Thursday that the top brands cut slashed prices on their LCD TV models on average of 23 percent for the holiday shopping weekend beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. The big guys cut their prices even more than lower-tier players like Vizio and Westinghouse, which dropped theirs by just 19 percent.

The top brands cut their prices so low that at one point the difference between a premium-brand 32-inch LCD TV and a value-brand version was just $61, according to iSuppli consumer electronics analyst Tina Tseng.

The lowest-priced 32-inch value brand LCD TV went for $388 over the weekend, while premium brands offered the same size for as low as $449. The lowest-priced value-brand 40-and 42-inch LCD TVs sold for about $598, while top-tier brands priced theirs at $798.

Even though Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, iSuppli says shoppers should expect to continue to see these same prices on LCD TVs through the rest of the year as the TV makers and retailers look to entice shoppers in spite of the current recession.

March 20, 2008 1:03 PM PDT

Nokia: European handset-sales growth took a hit in '07

by Richard Defendorf
  • 1 comment

In filings with U.S. regulators, Nokia on Thursday estimated that the growth rate for sales of its handsets in Europe had shrunk to 3 percent in 2007 from 16 percent in 2006.

What's more, the company said its growth rates had cooled in the Middle East and Africa (to 19 percent from 68 percent in 2006), North America (to 6 percent from 13 percent), and Latin America (to 10 percent from 15 percent), Reuters notes.

The global picture wasn't quite as wearying for Nokia: 2007 sales in the Asia-Pacific region grew by 34 percent, and in China, sales grew by 34 percent, offsetting the drops elsewhere. Nokia said emerging markets generated almost 60 percent of handset-industry sales volume last year, and 55 percent in 2006.

In light of sales-growth predictions released by Gartner in February and Sony Ericsson's announcement on Wednesday that slowing demand in Europe for its midpriced and high-end phones would ding its first-quarter results, the estimates from Nokia don't seem terribly surprising. Gartner predicted that handset sales growth in 2008 would slow to 10 percent worldwide, with market saturation in North America and Western Europe doing the most to slow sales momentum.

From here on out, global-growth forecasts for 2008 aren't likely to be even that optimistic.

Originally posted at News Blog
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