Key Consumer Electronics Retailers Project Sales To Consumers Of More Than 460,000 Digital TV Products This Year

Many Decry Industry Confusion On Standards, Definitions

4-Apr-00

More than 460,000 digital TV products will be sold to consumers this year, according to a first-quarter retail research study conducted by Neretin Associates and being sent out to subscribers this week.Aaron Neretin, President of Neretin Associates, stressed that these figures represent retail sales to consumers, not industry sales to retailers.""Accordingly,"" Neretin said, ""the 108 retailers we interviewed will be responsible for at least 90 percent of all United States digital TV sales this year.""The largest percentage of these sales are expected to be garnered by HDTV-ready direct-view and projection TV, followed by fully integrated HDTV sales and set-top decoders.While there is enthusiasm regarding the entire digital TV area there is also considerable confusion in the industry on what constitutes digital TV, HDTV-ready and fully integrated HDTV - confusion that, apparently, is filtering down to the consumer.Dealers are also upset by the inability of the industry to establish clear-cut HDTV standards and the obstacles that this failure to act has created on retail floors.Retailers indicated that they are downplaying fully integrated HDTV and set-top decoder boxes and would not push these categories until HDTV broadcasting increased considerably, the prices came down on both TVs and decoders and the built-in decoders were equal to or better than the newest stand-alone decoders being introduced by suppliers.The dealers are projecting that decoder sales this year will represent only 5.4 percent of the total digital-ready and HDTV-ready sales they expect to make.Thirty-two of the one-hundred-and eight retailers carry fully integrated HDTV on their floors. Fifty percent carry Sony, 28 percent Zenith, 12.5 percent Toshiba and ProScan, 9.4 percent Sharp and 6.3 percent Samsung. In all, twelve fully integrated brands were cited.All carry HDTV-ready and digital TV-ready. Brand penetration leaders in readies are Mitsubishi - 54.7 percent, Toshiba - 51.9 percent, Sony - 41.5 percent, Panasonic - 28.3 percent, Hitachi - 22.6 percent, RCA - 17.9 percent, Pioneer Elite - 13.2 percent and Pioneer - 10.4 percent. In all, sixteen ready brands were cited.The fifty-page study includes sales broken out by screen sizes, screen configurations and digital TV categories as well as a large segment of verbatim comments covering virtually all questions posed. The results focus on nine regions of the country and four retail channels.