Race on in Japan to make bigger TV sets

Press, 20 July 1987, Page 31

Race on in Japan to make bigger TV sets

By

GRAHAM EARNSHAW

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo The race to produce ever-bigger television sets is hotting up in Japan, and one company has unveiled a monster machine and proclaimed it the world’s largest picture-tube television set. At two million yen ($21,800), the Matsushita Corporation set is also one of the world’s most expensive. Market analysts said its 109 cm screen was in line with a trend in Japan towards big-screen home entertainment. Giant screens have become all the rage as increasingly affluent consumers trade in their smaller sets for something better. “There’s an increased perception among consumers that they need to have better . quality pictures,” Darrel Whitten of Prudential-Bache Securities told Reuters. "Watching a large TV,

you can really get involved in a movie, which is hard to do on a small screen TV. With a large screen TV, all that’s missing is the popcorn,” he said. Matsushita, which produces sets under the National brand, said sets with 56cm screens and larger accounted for 13 per cent of Japan’s television market last year, but that share would jump to 22 per cent this year. “The market for medium-size television sets is shrinking while the big and small ends are increasing,” a Matsushita spokesman said. The new 109 cm mammoth, which weights 140 kg, will not be massproduced. Units will be built on request only. Most big manufacturers now have sets with 76cm screens and larger in their regular lines selling from about 200,000 yen ($2180) and upwards. “The question is where

are you going to put these monsters? Evidently people are making room for them,” said Mr Whitten. He said manufacturers were pushing the larger sets because of the vastly larger profit margins they enjoy on them. Price competition in Japan for sets under 50cm is extremely keen, and getting sharper with increasing imports of smaller sets made elsewhere in East Asia, particularly South Korea and Taiwan. Will television sets get even bigger? Japanese television makers think so. “The size preferred by consumers in Japan, the United States and other markets is getting bigger and bigger,” said a Sony Corporation spokesman, Harry Machida. “It is a matter of increasing quality and decreasing price,” he said.