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The market for liquid crystal display televisions is seeing tremendous growth, leaving manufacturers scrambling to secure enough LCD panels.
This is a different story from early last year when LCD manufacturers were struggling from an oversupply of the panels.
According to U.S.-based market researcher DisplaySearch, this year's global LCD TV market is expected to increase 32 percent to 150 million sets from last year's 79 million.
The sudden swell is attributed to the upcoming Beijing Olympics, increased digital broadcasting in the U.S. next year, as well as a steady decline in the price of LCD TVs.
And this market doesn't look to slow down any time soon. Another market research company, iSuppli, says shipments of LCD TVs will double in two years.
The rosy outlook for the LCD panel market is causing TV manufacturers to also set goals to match. Japan's Sony, hoping to regain its position as the market leader, has put its sales target at 20 million.
Korea's Samsung Electronics, which sold 13 million sets last year, wants to sell 18 million this year, and LG Electronics aims to sell 14 million sets, twice that of last year's sales.
LG recently made a deal with Japanese company Sharp to purchase 32- and 52-inch LCD panels. And Japan's Toshiba can't get enough of Samsung's LCD panels. Samsung says it is unable to supply more of the panels because it is trying to meet its own demands.
Even with all the dealmaking going on to secure enough LCD panels, it is expected that supply will still fall short of demand by 10 percent this year.
Arirang News
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