Christmas Presents. Help! What Plasma Brand?

Pioneer’s recent exit from the Plasma business has left only a handful of Companies fighting for the number one spot. Pioneer had just launched its premier “Project Kuro” line which promised total black levels and was designed to give consumers a no-holds-barred choice for high-end plasma displays and with the help of the custom installation market captured the high-end of the market. The problem is that Pioneer, while predicting several hundreds of thousands of plasma TV sales, was up against rivals Samsung who own the majority of the market and Panasonic who have planned to increase sales volume.

Choices today are limited. We have seen the exit of many major brands over the years including the pioneer of bringing Plasma to the domestic market, Fujitsu. Once regarded as the Premium Plasma to own and certainly reigned supreme at the high end.

So with a handful of reputable Companies to pick from we have, Panasonic, Samsung and LG in that order. Samsung is regarded as “Good Value” but Panasonic is only a generation behind where Pioneer were, just a few more hundred dollars more than Samsung. Panasonic also has a range of Commercial/Professional models without built in tuners and are almost comparable to the Pioneer range. Then LG, “Lucky Goldstar”, sorry clever marketing has seen the adoption of “Lifes Good”

Currently Panasonic hold the number one spot by default, closely followed by Samsung with the highest cut of the market and slipping into third place…LG