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business newsPioneer Flees Plasma-TV Market
By
Scott Reeves Feb 13, 2009 1:30 pm
Brief scrutiny of today's headlines.
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Sales have been hurt by the worldwide economic slowdown and the rising yen.
Pioneer competed in the high end of the market, a decision that killed sales during the recession. The company will be discontinuing the product line by March 2010.
Pioneer expects to sell about 290,000 plasma TVs in the current fiscal year, down from about 460,000 last year.
Pioneer has already cut about 10,000 workers and plans to slash another 10,000. Pioneer warns that it may lose as much as $1.4 billion for the fiscal year ending in March.
Quality was never a problem, but Pioneer couldn’t catch up with Panasonic (PC), Sony (SNE), Samsung and LG. Staying out of small- and midsized screens made sense, because margins are razor-thin, and Asian companies duke it out for market share.
In January, Pioneer announced that it would also end production of its LaserDisc players. The company introduced the first consumer LD player in 1980; the technology is now a candidate for the Smithsonian.
Japan depends heavily on manufacturing and it has been hit hard in the worldwide recession.
No positions in stocks mentioned.
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