The LCD and plasma TV market is becoming so competitive that
companies that were once rivals are teaming up to drive costs down
and profits up. The latest victim of the competitive plasma panel
marketplace is Pioneer.
Pioneer made plasma HDTVs under the Elite brand and now makes Kuro
plasmas that were seen at CES 2008. Several sources are reporting
that Pioneer will stop making its own plasma panels. According to
Reuters, Pioneer
Corp is finalizing plans to halt all internal production of plasma
panels.
Pioneer is currently the 5th largest plasma TV maker and is
reported to be losing money on the plasma business it operates.
Nikkei says Pioneer
originally planned to sell 720,000 plasma TVs for the latest
fiscal year and were forced to revise its projections to 480,000
units. Pioneer is expected to report a loss of 10 billion yen or
about $96 million USD for the fiscal year.
Pioneer is said to be closing down one of its three Japanese
plasma manufacturing plants and focusing the remaining two plants on
assembling TVs. Pioneer already teamed up with Sharp to procure LCD
panels for its line of LCD TVs, and it will do the same thing to
source panels for its line of plasma TVs.
Pioneer will get plasma panels from industry behemoth Matsushita,
which has been on a spree recently with agreements
to buy portions of Hitachi and teaming
up with Canon and other manufacturers for LCD panels.
Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment
Management told MSNBC, “This is an excellent development
[Pioneer stopping plasma production]. Pioneer could have chosen
another way and stepped up its plasma investment despite the fact
that the business is bleeding red ink, but it's a wise step to decide
against that. A quicker decision would have been even better,
though.”