EXCLUSIVE: After rampant consumer discounting and the dishing out of big incentives for retailers to sell their brand, Sony is again the number one TV brand in Australia with new GFK data showing that the company had 14% of the market at January 2011, after selling 41,856 flat panel TVs.
In second place was Samsung with 39,934 units (13%) followed by LG with 30,572, (10%).
The big surprise was Sanyo who took out fourth place with 28,408 units and (9%) share. The Japanese manufacturer primarily sells through discount retailers excluding Harvey Norman.
In fifth place was Panasonic with 23,240 units followed by TEAC in 6th place with 16,957. Close behind was Toshiba.
The biggest category was house brands accounting for over 67,622 units.
January which is one of the biggest months of the years saw Chinese brands do well with Hisence, TLC and Celestial capturing 7% of the market. Also doing well was Palsonic who sold 10,920 units.
GFK data reveals that despite heavy marketing of 3D in 2010 only 100,450 units were sold, of these 61,900 were LCD and 38,500 were plasma TV’s primarily sold by Panasonic.
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Bill Crichton the CEO of Sanyo Australia said that he was surprised by the result. “We are one of those brands that fly under the radar. We don’t deal with the likes of Harvey Norman instead we focus on the value chain and this is paying off”” he said.
Last week Sony launched a new range of 3D Bravia TV’s that also have networking capability. Paul Colley the Technical Marketing Manager at Sony said that 25% of Sony TV’s already had a networking capability.
Lambro Skropidis the Head of Marketing at Samsung Australia said that his Company was confident that they could get back their #1 slot which they held throughout 2010 with a new range of Smart TV’s which are due to be released shortly.
He said “There is going to be Smart TV’s and Smart TV’s and being able to deliver the right content and applications is going to be the big difference between brands. We are confident that we have the right offering”.
