Sony’s TV Dominance at an End?
As I’ve mentioned before, I love my 35″ Sony XBR direct-view CRT television. It has the best-looking picture I’ve ever seen from a non-HD set. But last year when I went shopping for an HDTV, Sony just wasn’t in the picture (sorry). I had decided to go with a RPTV CRT for two reasons: cost and picture quality. It’s strange that the best-looking HDTVs currently available are also the cheapest. I don’t like flat screen so much that I’m willing to pay more for inferior picture quality. Researching the sets available, Sony just never came out on top. Mitsubishi televisions aren’t available here, so in the end I had to choose between Hitachi and Toshiba. And I wanted to go with sets with the higher quality lenses, so I had to go for last year’s televisions instead of the new 2005 models. I finally chose the Hitachi 57T500, mainly because I could find one.
It seems that I’m not the only one with such an experience. Keith Kaplan, profiled by an LA Times article, was also a Sony fan but bought a Panasonic set when it came time to buy an HDTV. The Panasonic was a plasma.
“I couldn’t find any Sony TVs I liked,” said Kaplan, who plunked down $3,500 at the Best Buy in West Los Angeles for the 42-inch plasma set. “This one just had the best picture, and it was a good price.”
It looks like Sony’s rivals are making inroads into what used to be Sony’s bread and butter:
“Sony’s products have always commanded a price premium because it was Sony,” said analyst Michelle Abraham of In-Stat, a market research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz. “But consumers’ willingness to pay that premium is eroding…. You can no longer assume that the other brands aren’t going to be as good. It’s an ongoing issue that Sony will have to face.”
That’s a dramatic shift from the days when Sony’s Trinitron sets garnered as much as 50% of the high-end television market and represented about 20% of all TV sets sold, according to market research firm Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y.
Sony is investing heavily in its LCD and SXRD operations, and I hope that pays off. I love my Sony set, and if they can start making beauties like that one again they’ll surely make a great comeback.
Check out our new sister blog on Home Theater, HTBlog.net
August 16th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
I had a similar experience a couple years ago when I was buying my first HDTV. The Sony in the price range I was looking just wasn’t very good. It sucked. That was the first thing that got me to lift my head up out of the Sony hole and I noticed that in every area other companies made products that I would be happier with. I now don’t own any Sony products where before everything was Sony. It was nice having every remote run everything else but not worth the price/performance you could get out of other companies’ products. I got a Samsung TV.
August 16th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
I gotta say that my inexpensive Sony DVD player sucks. I should have returned it when I had the chance. But my Sony computer, camcorder, PS2, and older XBR TV all work fine.