World Cup Helps TV Sales
World Cup season is over, but it seems this is one period in every year that TV manufacturers look forward to. Fo instance, Sony cites the World Cup as a major contributing factor for a boost in its flat-panel television sales in the first quarter of 2006. From the Financial Times:
Sony on Thursday unveiled an increase in first-quarter profit for the first time in four years on the back of a favourable exchange rate and a boost to its flat-panel TV sales from the World Cup soccer season.
…
Although TV sales grew 40 per cent during the World Cup, this was less than expected, leading to a rise in inventories and leaving the TV division still in the red.Nonetheless, Nobuyuki Oneda, chief financial officer, said the boost in demand was enough to help Sony make progress towards turning round its TV business. It also helped push the group’s LCD flat-panel production joint venture with South Korea’s Samsung into profit in the first quarter.
Sales of home entertainment and computing equipment are, after all, seasonal. For instance, it is foreseen that individuals and businesses would hold off on purchasing laptops and desktop computers in anticipation of Microsoft’s release of Windows Vista early next year. Vista was originally intended to be released mid-2006, but release was moved back a couple of times as the development team wanted to resolve bugs before finalizing the product.
This has hurt PC sales, especially since Vista has very intensive hardware requirements. Manufacturers these days are banking on labelling their computers as “Vista Ready.” Still, users are wary of the added cost (in terms of software prices and effort) of having to purchase and install Vista later on, as opposed to buying laptops or desktops that come with Vista by default.
On the TV front, technologies worth waiting for are the full switch to digital, HD broadcasts and IPTV.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
|