Revenue of China TV sales jumps 20% in Jan-Sept

Revenue from TV sales in China increased more than 20 percent in the first three quarters, led by falling price and rising demand, according to a report released on Wednesday.

About 27.04 million TV sets encompassing all brands, both foreign and domestic, were sold from January to September. The sales revenue increased 25.6 percent year on year to reach 92.2 billion yuan (13.49 billion U.S. dollars), according to the figure from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the China Video Industry Association (CVIA).

LCD TV sales rose 54.2 percent to hit 7.8 million units, equivalent to the total for all of 2007. Sales revenue hit 57.7 billion yuan, up 46.9 percent from the same period last year, according to data provided by Oliver Wyman, a New York-based management consulting firm.

Falling prices and surging demand from China's vast rural areas and the less-developed small cities were reasons behind the sales boom, said Yu Liangxing of the CVIA research department.

The prices of LCD TVs dropped 15.6 percent year on year with enhanced technology and output during the first nine months. Prices of TVs with LCD larger than 40 inches plunged more than 20 percent on average, according to the Oliver Wyman data.

TV demand was likely to peak in 2008 as most Chinese families were expected to buy a new set to replace their old one, based on the calculation of the average TV life expectancy and the purchase curve in the last 10 years, said Yu. LCD TV had become their first choice.

China currently has 320 million households owning more than 340million TV sets.

Plasma TV sales jumped 250.2 percent to 1.18 million units, worth 8.7 billion yuan, a rise of 108.6 percent in the first three quarters, according to Oliver Wyman.

CRT TV sales fell 5 percent in the third quarter to 5.63 million, worth 8 billion yuan, down 4 percent year on year.

Bai Weimin, CVIA's chairman, noted China's domestic TV producers have been actively tapping the upper-stream of the flat-panel TV industry; most of the producers launched manufacturing of LCD in 2007, where costs take 60 to 70 percent of the price for a single TV set. That will help them gain more profits and have a bigger say in pricing, which is good for the industry competitiveness.

Source: Xinhua