Electronics makers expect slower sales

Tag : electronics

Corinne Vigreux, a founder of TomTom, a satellite navigation devicecompany, agreed that home spending would increase.
"When people don't have much money, they cut on big stuff and buythings that make their lives a little bit better, like consumerelectronics,"
Vigreux said she expected TomTom, to be largely unaffected by theslowing economy in Europe and the United States, but retailers werebeing "very careful" on inventory levels in the run-up toChristmas.
Consumer electronics makers from around the world are in Berlin toshowcase their products at the IFA electronics fair that startedFriday and ends Wednesday.
Many companies count on the fair for new orders as retailers shopfor the upcoming holiday season, but the sellers are worried that agloomy macroeconomic environment is casting a pall over sentiment.
"The overall market in 2008 is not very good and Europe is evenworse," Simon Kang, president and chief executive of LG DigitalDisplay.
A global economic slowdown, oil price increases and the subprimecrisis had taken their toll, Kang added.
Euro zone retail sales posted their biggest ever yearly fall inJune and British retail sales dropped at their sharpest pace in atleast 25 years in August.
Kang expects the TV market in Europe to be flat this year and hasseen some reluctance among retailers to place orders since May.Still LG predicts it will outperform the market in Europe.
"We are seeing people are more sensitive to promotional deals buthave not seen signs of consumers turning to third-tier brands,"said LG Digital Display's Europe head, Chi Eun Lee.
Lee also said she expected leading TV makers to intensify pricecompetition, especially the biggest brands like Sony and Samsung,the two leading LCD TV makers, before the Christmas shoppingseason.
Japanese electronics maker Toshiba, which also sells LCD TVs, saidcompanies should not sacrifice profit margins for volume even ifthe weaker euro slows the growth of Europe's consumer electronicssector.
"We're not planning to subsidize this exchange rate swing at all,"said Alan Thompson, Toshiba's executive vice president of computersystems for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "We'll either findways of reducing the costs still further or we may have to adjustprices upwards."
Thompson said retailers were facing pressure from the economicslowdown and it was hard to predict where consumers would cutspending, but Toshiba was well positioned with alternatives toexpensive rival high-definition video playback systems.