Japan's Toshiba Corp expects its LCD TV business in China to grow by over 25 percent next year amid strong consumer demand ahead of events such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, senior executives said on Sunday.
The electronics giant also aims to launch its high definition DVD player in China in the next year, trying to gain an edge as demand grows amid falling prices of high-definition televisions and DVD players.
"The LCD TV market in China is growing rapidly, it's now maybe about double what it was last year," Yasuhide Ozo, general manager of Toshiba's television sales planning unit, told Reuters.
He was speaking in an interview on the sidelines of SINOCES, one of China's largest consumer electronics shows in the eastern port city of Qingdao.
"Last year the market was about four to five million units. This year we expect 8 million units, and next year maybe 10 million units," Ozo said, referring to China's LCD TV market size and adding that he hopes to outperform that growth.
He added that Toshiba, which has launched under the "Regza" brand in China, has an 8 percent to 10 percent share of China's LCD TV market.
"If 10 million is China's market size next year, that might make it the second-largest in the world after the United States," Ozo said.
Toshiba posted net sales of 7.1 trillion yen ($57.60 billion) for the year to 2007 March. Toshiba China had total business, including exports, of 64 billion yuan ($8.42 billion), the executives said.
Toshiba also hopes to launch its high definition DVD players in China in the next year. While it has roughly 1,000 employees in research and development in the country, R&D for the players would be done mainly in Japan, said Lei Haitao, vice president and director of research and development at Toshiba China.
"We hope to launch before the Beijing Olympics, so probably in the coming year, but there are many issues," said Lei.
The speed of the launch, which would be in partnership with Chinese manufacturers and distributors, depended in part on progress in content licensing and software issues, he added, but declined to comment on sales targets for China.
Toshiba recently said it was slashing its sales target for high definition DVD players and recorders after disappointing sales in the US, putting a damper on prospects for one of its growth businesses.
The electronics group now expects to sell 1 million next-generation optical disc players in North America by the end of calendar 2007, down 44 percent from its previous estimate of 1.8 million unit sales.
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