Sports fans in Melbourne already know the name Hisense after the Chinese Company recently forked out millions to sponsor a local arena that is used for the Australian Open Tennis Championship. Now GFK is saying that Chinese Companies are set to take over the mantle of being the biggest consumer electronic manufacturers in the world.
The International research Company claims that consumer electronics revenues in China are forecast to hit $100 billion by 2009, and overtake western Europe and North America in 2009 to 2010. The report is backed by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).
In 2007, China registered a 19 percent growth with its sales of mobile phones, flat-screen TVs and PCs. This year, despite gloomy economic outlook and downward pressures on prices of gadgets, global revenues are expected to grow by 9.4 percent. Asia is foreseen to lead global electronics market growth in 2008 with a revenue growth of 16.5 percent, while Western Europe and North America lag with 2.3 percent and 4.9 percent growth rates, respectively.
The report attributes the growth of global consumer electronics market to the popularity and increasing demand for replacement technologies, such as laptops over desktop PCs, and mobile phones and flat-screen TVs over their bulky counterparts. The report notes that although multifunction devices continue to grow in popularity, dedicated devices have not lost their niche markets.
Portability is also found to be an important factor to electronics consumers as illustrated by the 2007 sales of portable gadgets, which reached more than 2 billion units. Video game devices and consoles, such as Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, are also high-growth areas. The growth in technical electronics has caused a positive ripple effect on their accessories such as memory cards, digital photo frames, printers and batteries.
