Vizio, a small company based in Southern California, has surprised the industry in recent months by outpacing Sony and other top name brands in both LCD and Plasma set sales. The company has been able to do it by lowering prices and aggressively marketing the sets, particularly in North America.
But despite losing market share to Vizio, Sony apparently is not impressed. In a conference call yesterday with Wall Street analysts following the company's new quarterly report, a top Sony executive was asked how he plans to compete in the increasingly competitive field of televisions.
Robert Wiesenthal, executive vice president of Sony Corporation of America, responded by suggesting that Vizio and other low-cost sets are not top quality.
"I think it's important to point out there is a very big difference between the high-end 1080p sets (from Sony) and the low-end kind of Vizio and Chinese manufacturer semi non-HD sets," said Wiesenthal.
Vizio actually makes 1080p high-def sets, but Wiesenthal said Sony HDTVs will appeal to consumers looking for higher-quality products.
"So when we talk about these lower cost versions there is a big bandwidth in the middle that we think we still can make money on that where there is a market hole that retail tells us that there is a demand for Sony products," he said.
In other remarks, Sony said it expects to sell seven million standalone Blu-ray players worldwide the next year, compared to two million this year.
And Wiesenthal said that Blu-ray disc sales now only represent two percent of the DVD markets, but that number jumps as high as 13 percent on some titles.
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