Pioneer drop out of TV market

[divine]

Pioneer To End TV Production, Spin Off DVD Development-Nikkei

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

TOKYO (Nikkei)--Pioneer Corp. (6773.TO) will pull the plug on its loss-ridden television business and shift its DVD player operations to a new venture with Sharp Corp. (6753.TO) in a sweeping overhaul, The Nikkei reported in its Thursday morning edition.

The company had been planning to end in-house production of plasma panels by the end of March and outfit its TVs with Panasonic Corp. (6752.TO) panels instead. Faced with worsening profit margins, however, it has decided to end TV development and production altogether.

Pioneer will idle its lone domestic TV factory in Shizuoka Prefecture sometime this year. Factories in the U.S. and Europe are already slated for closure.

Sales of Pioneer TVs will continue for the time being. The company has not yet decided what to do when inventories run out.

Meanwhile, Pioneer will spin off its DVD player operations, which are equally steeped in losses, to a new company to be set up with Sharp as early as this spring.

The company plans to eliminate several thousand of its roughly 40,000 groupwide jobs in the year ending March 2010. Pioneer is likely to post a consolidated net loss of more than Y100 billion for the year ending this March, wider than the Y78 billion loss it forecast earlier.