14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the US holiday known as Black Friday is usually one that encourages sales by a very large degree, this year went by without it managing to have a big enough impact on the LCD TV market, especially when it came to LED-backlit models.
It seems that the price cuts on Black Friday failed to actually help display vendors exhaust their supplies of TV sets.
Granted, the situation was not very severe when it came to products that used CCFL backlights.
In fact, it could be said that the focus of marketing during said day was, in fact, on these types of TV sets.
Samsung's 32-inch model, for instance, dropped to US$329, by US$50 compared to the regular price, while second-tier vendors also let their products go for less than US$200.
As Digitimes has it, there was an increase of just 0.3% in terms of revenues during Black Friday, meaning a sum of US$10.69.
It is also interesting that, with TV vendors conservative about sales targets, it is now assumed that year-end holiday sales will increase by just 5-10%.
As for LED-backlit panels, the price drop was actually lower than was expected, and still it failed to help suppliers digest their inventories.
As such, instead of the price gap between them and CCFL-backlit ones being of US$50-100, it stayed above $150.
Thus, the conclusion can be drawn that vendors either did not choose their tactics well in exhausting their inventories, or they simply were not especially inclined to achieve this goal during Black Friday.
As such, LED-backlit TVs are still in very high inventory levels, meaning that companies will have to work especially hard to boost their appeal during the holiday shopping season that is already underway.
Basically, end-users can expect LED LCD TVs to be sold through promotions over the next few weeks.