While Japanese company Fujitsu invented plasma, it is credited with doing a poor job of marketing the flat panel technology which during the past 12 months has lost share to LCD TV technology in the fast growing flat screen TV market, despite the fact that it is a superior technology to liquid crystal display (LCD) technology.
This resulted in Fujitsu selling the rights to the plasma technology to Hitachi which last week reported losses for the last six months of over $400 million dollars from its plasma TV operations. Today Fujitsu relies on Hitachi to produce its panels.
What Fujitsu and Hitachi lack in Australia is marketing skills or the budget to invest in brand advertising that generates plasma sales, and for specialist resellers this is important as both Pioneer and Panasonic are currently investing millions in marketing that drives consumers into stores. And when in the store consumers are more apt to be disposed to a brand they know.
