When Taiwan's Vizio started changing the pricing game in flat-screen televisions back in late 2006, larger competitors like Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) worried that Vizio would make all the profits vanish from the television market by virtue of its aggressive pricing just as consumers were ditching tube televisions for flat-screen ones.It's now 2009, and Vizio has become one of the largest sellers of flat-screen televisions in the world. The brand is in every discount club, mass retailer and consumer electronics chain. Larger overall brands like Sony and Samsung have had to come down and meet constantly-decreasing pricing led by Vizio and others. Now, the company wants to become a leader in internet-connected televisions.
This is a paradigm shift of sorts. The holy grail as cable television and satellite slowly become obsolete has been television sets with WiFi and internet networking capability which would allow all the content a consumer wants to be piped through the internet, on demand, with acceptable quality.
Even DVRs like Tivo, Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO) could be more of a transitional technology than a permanent one as consumers choose what and when they want programming. If that happens, and Vizio is at the forefront of adding the needed technical capability to its already-leading market share, Vizio could become the largest brand in television technology for quite a long time. Georges Yared predicted this over a year ago and it's becoming more true every day.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-06-2009 @ 10:00PM
Jim Noyd said...
VIZIO, Inc. is a U.S. corporation based in Irvine, CA.