Gadget sales up by 17%

And affluent Singaporeans are at the forefront as LED TV sales jumped considerably by 34% last year to hit 38% of overall TV units being sold in Q1, says GfK Asia.

Consumers here are also most receptive towards newer TV models with web content access features, also known as smart TV. One in every ten TV units sold in Singapore in quarter one was a smart TV. Across the region, the smart TV market has grown by 21 percent over the same quarter last year.

Overall, consumers electronics industry totaled a whopping USD1.415 billion.

Television, further segmented into CRT, LCD and plasma, forms the core of the demand within the consumer electronics sector, which also includes DVD player/recorder (7%), audio home system (6%), portable media player (4%) and camcorder (3%). First quarter revenue from the LCD market takes up 58 percent of the overall consumer electronics sales pie as compared to 50 percent in the previous year.

“GfK findings reported an average price increase of 8.7 percent in the consumer electronics category in the Southeast Asian countries, and this is indicative of the heightened pace in market switchover to newer technology, such as from CRT to flat panel TV, and basic DVD players to blu-ray players, etc” commented Ms Jasmine Lim, Regional Account Director for Consumer Electronics, GfK Asia.

“This phenomenon is particularly high in the developing economies of Vietnam and Indonesia where growth rates hit 38 and 37 percent over the same period last year,” she added.

In terms of adoption of TV technology, markets in this region are presently at varying developmental stages. Over half of all TV units sold in Indonesia (66%) and Philippines (58%) were still CRT-TVs while in Singapore, the number has dwindled to almost none, with LCD and plasma TVs instead forming nearly all of consumers’ purchases.

The adoption rate of flat panel TVs in Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand are slightly less advanced with its first quarter sales volume reaching 84, 66 and 53 percent respectively.

“The prevailing television technology in a country—be it CRT, LCD, LED or 3D TVs, is reflective of its economic status. There is a direct correlation since the relative affluence and living standards in these countries have a big role to play in how quickly the switchover in technology will take place,” said Ms Lim.

“Trends in North Asia serve as a good indicator of Southeast Asia’s future—we can expect to see LED TVs entering the mass market like in Hong Kong and South Korea where almost one LED TV is being sold for every LCD screen.”

“With some of the largest and most populous developing countries hailing from Southeast Asia, the full potential of the TV market in this region is far from being realized,” said Ms Lim. “The industry will continue thriving and contribute substantially as a key driving force of the consumer electronics industry,” she concluded.