Benq Says 2010 China LCD TV Sales May Rise 10-Fold

Benq Corp., the branded electronics unit of Taiwan’s Qisda Corp., said it expects to increase liquid-crystal-display television sales 10-fold from 2008 in China, their fastest-growing market globally.

The company projects sales of the flat-screen models will rise to 300,000 sets next year from 30,000 in 2008, Hank Horng, 47, who heads Benq’s China business, said in an interview at Benq’s headquarters in Taipei today. The company is expected to sell 100,000 LCD TVs this year, he said.

Benq joins Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc., the world’s two biggest makers of TVs, in seeking to expand in China, the fastest-growing major economy. The number of LCD TVs sold in China may jump 87 percent to 25 million this year and will probably increase 32 percent in 2010, Austin, Texas-based researcher DisplaySearch said last month.

“We currently have a small presence in China’s TV market since we’ve only just started, and focus mainly on the eastern China provinces,” Horng said. “We plan to expand into the northern and mid-north of China in the current quarter.”

Qisda climbed 3.7 percent to close at NT$19.85 in Taipei trading. The stock has more than tripled this year, after falling to a record NT$5.17 in November last year. AU Optronics Corp., the world’s third-biggest LCD maker in which Qisda owns about a 9 percent stake, declined 0.9 percent to NT$32.55 today.

‘The Right Strategy’

“It’s the right strategy to pursue the TV market, since China is poised to become the world’s biggest LCD TV market in the coming years, and everything else in the consumer- electronics sector is either slowing or stagnating,” said Roger Yu, an analyst at Polaris Securities Co. in Taipei.

DisplaySearch last month raised its full-year estimate for global LCD TV shipments to rise 24 percent to 130 million units, compared with an earlier prediction of 127 million sets, citing demand from China and North America and as more consumers replace their bulkier glass-tube sets.

“Taiwan remains our biggest market for TVs, and we expect China to overtake Taiwan as the biggest market next year,” Horng said. “Our TV sales in China during the eight-day National Day holiday were equivalent to the whole month of sales in September.”

Benq sells TVs through RT-Mart, a hyper-mart owned by Taipei-based Ruentex Industries Ltd., in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian provinces, Horng said. The company will expand its retail business through RT-Mart’s outlets in Shandong, Hunan, Henan and Hebei this quarter, Horng added.

LCD TV unit sales in China will exceed those in North America by 2011, the Korea-based researcher DisplayBank forecast in August.