Sony Tv Plasma

Sony Corp., the world's second-largest consumer electronics maker, has no immediate plans to stop making and selling plasma televisions, company spokesman Koichi Izukura said, denying an earlier Nihon Keizai newspaper report.

Sony will stop producing plasma televisions at four plants in Japan and abroad, and discontinue sales as early as spring 2005 to focus on liquid-crystal display flat-panel TVs, the newspaper reported today, without saying where it got its information.

"While we will focus more on LCD and projection televisions, we will keep assembling plasma products," Izukura said. "We will continue selling plasma televisions."

Narrowing television production focus may help Sony boost sales at its consumer electronics division, where operating profit slumped 83 percent to 7.2 billion yen in the fiscal second- quarter, an analyst said. Sony now sells televisions that use plasma displays, liquid crystal displays, light-emitting diode backlighting systems, and conventional cathode-ray tube televisions.

"Sony's LCDs and PDPs don't have the same kind of momentum that its cathode-ray tube televisions did," said Yoku Ihara, head of equity research at Retela Crea Securities Co. in Tokyo. "Instead of making LCD, PDP and rear-projection televisions, I can understand why they would want to narrow their focus on more profitable televisions."

Shares of Sony fell 0.8 percent to 3,910 yen as of 10:29 a.m. in trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Shares of Pioneer, which sells plasma displays to Sony, fell 2.2 percent to 1,996 yen.

Sony in November introduced the world's first television that uses a light-emitting diode backlighting system to produce sharper and brighter images. The company also has a venture with South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. to make LCD panels.

Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co.
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