Vietnam’s hapless electronics manufacturers cede CRT TV market

You might think that the cathode ray tube (CRT) TV is so last century. Vietnam’s electronics manufacturers evidently do. By not producing them, they’ve abandoned business worth 1500 billion dong ($79 million) last year to foreigners, according to Saigon Tiep Thi.

In the last few years, the volume of CRT TV’s sold worldwide has decreased annually by 30 to 40 percent. However, there’s still a market for them. Not everyone can afford a fancy LCD TV, points out Do Khoa Tan, Director of Vietronics Bien Hoa (Belco), a TV manufacturer.

One million TVs sold a year

Also according to Tan, about one million CRT TV’s will be sold in Vietnam this year, and about 50 million units worldwide.

A source from Samsung’s Vietnam subsidiary said that the Korean company has sold 200,000 CRT TV’s here so far this year. LG has sold 140,000 CRT sets, and Panasonic 100,000. The Ministry of Industry and Trade reports that in the first four months of the year, Sharp Electronic Vietnam imported 30,000 21 inch and 29 inch CRT TVs.

There are still a few Vietnamese makers. Tran Van Sam, Director of Dong A Company, the maker of ‘Sam’ brand CRT TV’s, says that in the first five months of the year, his company has sold 200,000 units, mostly 21 inch TVs, at the prices of between 1.14 million dong (normal TVs) and 1.25 million dong (slim TVs), or $60 and $65 respectively.

Though per unit price tags are low, experts say that the CRT TV market is still a lucrative field for electronic manufacturers. That explains foreign investors who have factories in Vietnam, like Samsung, LG and Panasonic, are still making CRT TVs.

Saigon Tiep Thi quotes a retailer as saying that CRT TVs, especially slim TVs with 25 inches or larger screens, have still been selling well in Vietnam, and that foreign manufacturers now hold 70 percent of the CRT TV market share in Vietnam.

As for domestic manufacturers, in addition to Dong A’s ‘Sam’ brand CRT TVs, there are also ‘Darling’ TVs. A CRT TV assembly plant, Sumo, has just become operational. The three manufacturers collectively hold a 20 percent market share.

According to Le Van Chinh, Advisor to Soncamedia, there are super-cheap TVs on the market, priced at only 600,000-800,000 dong. Chinh says that these TVs are assembled from parts imported from China.

The profit and the vision

Though big foreign manufacturers are still unembarrassedly making products with old technology, and earning 10 or 15 percent profit on each unit, many Vietnamese enterprises have ignored the CRT TV market for the last several years.

Some of the Vietnamese electronics companies have shifted to assembling LCD TVs because they think this can bring more profit. Others have gone into other lines of business, including real estate trading. Binh Hoa and Viettronics Thu Duc, once flagship firms in Vietnam’s electronics industry, now exclusively produce foreign-branded goods under contract to foreign manufacturers.

Saigon tiep thi

Tags: Vietnam electronics