While the TV market will surely grow in China, LCD TV will not rise as the mainstream until 2010, said Yan, Xiaolin, CTO of Components SBU & General Manager of Technology Center, TCL.

TV sales will reach 45.60 million units in 2010 in China, up from 36.88 million in 2006, which was 20.4% of the global market, said. Shipments of TVs in North America were only 29.82 million units, with Japan seeing 9.97 million, Yan added.

In China, the shipment breakdown between CRT and LCD TVs in 2006 was 31.42 million and 4.13 million units, versus 33.57 million and 1.38 million in 2005, Yan said. In the LCD TV segment, 32-inch was the mainstream size, he indicated.

There were 578,760 PDP (plasma display panel) TVs sold in 2006, representing only a 6% on year growth. Yan said the weaker-than-expected sale was a reflection of price advantage of 40-inch level LCD TVs amid seventh-generation (7G) output. Sales of rear-projection TVs (RPTVs) totaled at 530,000 in 2006, compared to a record of 920,000 in 2005, Yan noted.

In terms of sales value, Yan noted the breakdown between CRT and LCD TVs was 40.5% and 40.6% in January 2006, with the latter growing rapidly to 51.5% in six months' time at the expense of the 4.6-percentage-point reduction from the CRT TV segment, Yan added.

In separate news, Yan stressed there is now limited room for further improvements of flat-panel display (FPD) TVs for TV vendors in China, as most of the technical know-hows are already incorporated in the TVs. Circuit board, image processing IC and backlight unit (BLU) are all pre-installed inside TVs. As a result, China-based TV vendors have to standardize their products, dedicate more efforts on brand management to increase their shares and seek for various ways to secure panel supply, he indicated.

TCL, Changhong Electric, Konka, Hisense and Skyworth together claim around 85% of the China TV market, with Gome Home Appliances, Suning Electronics and Yongle Electric Appliance seeing the largest growth in terms of market share of the TV channel market in China, Yan said.