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As the world goes into recovery mode following the 2009 economic crisis, Asian consumers have also started loosening their purse strings and are more willing to splurge on big ticket items in home technology. GfK Asia findings reflected an annual 17% growth in value of the consumer electronics industry in Asia when compared to the same period in the previous year.

A large proportion of consumer spend in the area of consumer electronics—around four-fifths (80%)— goes to television sets while the rest of the pie is occupied by other product categories such as portable media player, DVD player/recorder, audio home system and camcorder.

“The overall 17% growth in the consumer electronics category were mostly driven by the TV category, particularly LCD TV segment, which on its own, registered a 40% and 54% growth in sales and unit value respectively,” observed Jasmine Lim, Regional Account Director, GfK Asia Pte Ltd. “GfK retail audit shows that value share of LCD TVs in the consumer electronics industry have grown by a significant 10% to hit 60%. In the past twelve months, consumers in the region spent over US$5.3 billion on LCD TVs.”

In most Asian countries, flat screen TV has almost completely replaced the CRT TV, and they make up 70% of the overall television sales in the region. CRT TVs are still popular and occupy between 18% to 45% share of the overall consumer electronics market in countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand but sales in these countries for this particular category have been declining rapidly.

Rising demand of flat panel TV with LED backlight, full high definition and larger screen sizes has been contributing to the value growth in the TV segment across the region. “One other segment that also possesses high growth potential is 3D TV. Recently introduced to the consumer TV arena, there has been a lot of hype surrounding 3D TV and consumers are slowly but surely getting acquainted with this new technology,” said Lim. “Currently, limiting factors other than high price points include lack of content, high production costs, scarcity of channels, and bandwidth constraints, but our findings reveal that consumers in countries such as Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore are receptive and are already starting to adopt this new technology.”

Aside from TVs, other home technology products that are also doing well in Asia are higher-end audio home entertainment systems and DVD players/recorders. “Even though the overall performance of these product categories have been holding steady or even declining in the past few years, segments with lifestyle design are growing rapidly as seen from the rising sales of Bluray products and soundbars. DVD players/recorders with Blu-ray reported triple digit growth across Asian countries such as Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, with Singapore taking the lead in adopting this new technology,” added Lim.

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