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.

[Mark]

Originally Posted by divine

Indeed. Trouble is, they're very much high-end niche market, and that's where the recession is biting hardest.

It's certainly a shame to see the best in the business going south. I'd hoped one day I might sell my old Pioneer plasma and get a Kuro, but that isn't to be. A lot of the Japanese tech firms are in one hell of a mess at the moment.

[divine]

That's the trouble, they restricted themselves to the high end which was ok when everyone was feeling flush 18 months ago.

I wonder if they'd have lasted much longer had they produced a more budget range of screens.

[Flibster]

Time to get that 60" Kuro then....

[A Place of Light]

Sad news tbh.

[Psymonkee]

D'oh

What happens if it breaks after 1 year - will they still handle repairs?

[Mark]

The Sale of Goods Act doesn't go away just because the manufacturer has - just be sure to pick a retailer that has a chance of still being around in a few years.

[leowyatt]

You do wonder if their TVs were a little more evenly priced they might not be leaving the market so soon.

[Greenlizard0]

Does this mean in essence we're going to see heavy reductions in Pioneers in a few months?

[Mark]

Depends on stock levels. I wouldn't expect to see much discounting though, beyond the usual discounting suspects.