Win a Samsung LCD HD TV and a Blu-Ray Player!!!

Win a Samsung LCD HDTV Model-LE19R86 + SONY Blu-Ray Player Photo courtesy of TheSun.co.uk

Yep, you read that right. Still reeling from my Polaroid LCD TV problem, I somehow had the luck of stumbling into this Sun contest that is giving away a brand new Samsung LCD HD TV (Model Samsung-LE19R86) and a Sony Blu-Ray player! Now I’m more depressed. It would have been good tidings for me if I was a UK resident as the competition’s only open to them. Bummer. Deadline for joining the contest is April 6.

LCD TV Sales are up in US and UK

Speaking of Samsung, I hear that despite the dreary worldwide economic conditions they are still selling products! Well, apparently, the LCD TV segment in the U.S. in general is still doing good despite the upheavals in our financial markets. Samsung is still leading the pack with a market share increase of 5% which brings it to 26% market share! That is double the market share of its closes rival Sony at 13% market share. This market report indicated that the LCD TV market grew by about 20% in January and February on year! That’s just amazing.

LG Electronics, in Europe, likewise reported positively with a whooping 50% in sales!

Where can you attribute this surge in sales? According to CEO of Samsung, Lee Yoon-woo, it can be explained by the huge reduction in prices of the LCD TVs. The VP for LCD Division of Samsung, Scott Birnbaum, on the other hand, used a bit of psychology in his explanation:

“People are trying to replicate that movie theater experience,” Birnbaum says, driving them to buy bigger and bigger TVs. Bigger TVs have always been considered better, but when a TV gets larger, the quality of the image has to increase too, or the picture looks grainy and suffers from motion blur. “Now companies are doing 120 and 240Hz refresh rates, and doing three interpolated frames for every real frame you’re seeing” to get quality up to par with size, Birnbaum says. That quality improvement is driving consumers to upgrade from older flat-screens, or winning over reluctant tube-TV owners.

I kind of agree with both explanations but I have another one. People are buying up LCD TVs because of the bad economy! As I have pointed out in my previous post where I called on everyone who had the cash to buy a new TV this year, flat screen TV prices are cheap because of the speculation that demand will drop. So when people saw how much they dropped, people bought TVs because they don’t have anything else to do but stay home and watch TV to ride out the depression!

Now, has anyone seen a cheap Panasonic Neo PDP Z1 or Philips 37PFL7603D? I’m thinking it’s one of those or I’m off to UK to join a contest…

Recommended read: Why Are Samsung’s LCD TV Sales Still Booming?

 

Best time to Buy a New TV is this Year (2009)!!!

LCD Television

Planning on buying a new TV? This year might be a pretty good time to do so because, from the looks of things, with the effects of the global credit crisis trickling down to many aspects of life as we know it, the demand for televisions is being predicted to go down this year. Why then is it a good time then to buy new TVs? Because the reduction in demand will push dealers to bring down the price. We’re already seeing this actually with $600 flat screens already being sold in online stores like Amazon. I wouldn’t have imagined this a few years back when $2,000 LCD TVs were far too common sight in appliance stores.

If you’ve already saved up the money to buy that brand new big flat screen TV, then I’d suggest that you head on over to the store and go get that new telly. Or, you could wait it out some more and see if the prices will continue to drop. This is a likelihood given the prediction by DisplaySearch.

While sales for the year 2008 were 3% higher to 206 million units compared to the year 2007, this won’t likely be the case for 2009. DisplaySearch is predicting a whopping overall drop of 18% in revenue and a 1% reduction in unit sales worldwide. The LCD TV segment will be hit the hardest as it is predicted to drop by 16% revenue-wise to $88 billion despite a 17% increase in projected shipment or demand. Manufacturers are simply sacrificing profits and concentrating on jockeying for more market share by bringing down the price. Bad news for retailers but good news for us.

These are the good ol’ market forces working its magic and its mayhem. And a good way to reduce todays craziness in the markets is by taking advantage of the price drops and perhaps help out a bit in stimulating the economy.

Go and buy big screen TVs!!!