In its 90-year history

Oct 9, 2008 08:26 GMT  ·  By

Although most people reading this article, including its author, weren't born in 1952 (in many cases, their parents weren't born, either), this year was extremely important for the Japanese company Matsushita (now Panasonic Corp.), since it marked the beginning of its very long foray into the world of television. And now, 58 years later, Panasonic has announced that is has just produced its 300 millionth TV set, which is solid proof of its resilience on this highly-competitive market.

As Japanese news agency Jiji Press reports, in a press conference held in Tokyo, Panasonic has announced its very impressive achievement, also mentioning the fact that its TV brand is the first ever to reach this number. It's been quite a long way from those first duplex lamp sockets manufactured by Konosuke Matsushita way back in 1918 up to the latest 3D plasma display projects, and quite a successful one, it seems.

However, it's important to mention that not all of the 300 million TVs were Panasonics, and that's because the company also manufactured around 105 million units under the National brand, which was used mostly on the Japan home market. The rest of 195 million units were full-fledged Panasonic models, the brand that was used for all of the company's TVs starting with 1988, regardless of the particular market they targeted.

It's also quite interesting to note that Panasonic has some pretty bold plans for the future. Thus, despite the fact that it took it quite a lot of time to achieve this milestone, the giant manufacturer hopes that the time required in order to go over the next one (400 million units) will be considerably shorter, namely just a few years. This is a rather bold statement, and, given the current state of world economy, it's rather unlikely that Panasonic will actually be able to achieve this goal, but who knows...

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