Indicating reduced profitability in the video display market, Fujitsu (OTC: FJTSY) has announced its departure from the production of high end plasma televisions. This news comes via ars technica and is indicative of a major trending pattern. Much is astir among Japanese electronics manufacturers as companies there take a turn for the lean and are engaged in forming manufacturing power alliances.

Much is being affected by the near total domination of liquid crystal display technology within a tightening, yet deepening image display sector. Take further evidence of change by considering Brian White's post about the exit from rear projection television by Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE). The LCD field is currently saturated and for it's improvement it needs to thin out.

Strides are still being made in regard to making LCD displays thinner and engineers are working on reducing power consumption. Little can be done however, to improve LCD profitability with so many companies cranking out cheap displays. What's needed now is for some of the remaining display manufacturers to aggressively address some considerable quality issues.

Gary Sattler does not knowingly hold financial interest in the companies he blogs about.

Samsung Electronics (LSE: SMSN) is a big name in the consumer electronics field these days. Personally, I use a Samsung cellphone, color laser printer, LCD computer monitor and more. In many cases, Samsung products have entered my home due to good pricing, stylish quality and excellent craftsmanship. Those amenities are apparently not enough to keep large profits flowing into South Korea's largest company (by revenue).

Samsung continues to be the world's largest seller of flat-panel screens (computer monitors and flat-panel televisions) and is a staple in the cellphone world, serving virtually every global market that exists along with almost every wireless carrier in established wireless markets. But, even with that, the company's share price is down 10% this year, and the company is expected to report its fourth straight quarter of declining profit. What's happened?

Margins have plummeted in many areas where it leads, such as flat-panel technology and computer components (Samsung makes more computer RAM memory than any other company). The company has been slow to create market-leading awareness in higher-margin businesses (like color laser printers), and its recent quarterly results show this. Are customers increasingly being more satisfied with Samsung's products, thereby waiting on upgrading and considering price as the main factor when they do? Perhaps.

Consumers in emerging markets have these same concerns as well (especially price), so where are all these new high-margin product segments at, then? That's the magic 8-ball question. I'll say this: I've owned a high-end Samsung cellphone since January of this year and don't plan on upgrading it for a long time. Why? Well, it works great and has every conceivable feature I could ever need in a cellphone. Samsung doesn't want to hear that, though. In other words, it may be making many products so good that customers have a stagnating need to buy the latest and greatest.

The more I read about flat-panel television manufacturer Vizio, the more I understand how this company is almost single-handedly disrupting the price marketplace for the current technology that powers television viewing. Tube televisions are going out of style almost as fast as the cassette tape did in the early 1990s, and flat-panel sets featuring plasma or LCD technology are settling in as the new choice for almost every new television purchase. Of course, folks are still buying tube-style TV sets as fire sales blaze into many retailers, but I'll bet that will slow down in the next few years.

After having stepped into Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC), Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) recently, the Vizio nameplate was everywhere, from the 32-inch television to the 50-inch big screen set. The prices were 30% lower (on average) than from competing sets featuring the Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) and Samsung nameplates, but looked every bit as good from an aesthetic and picture point of view. Purists will dig into specifications and technical jargon, but the average consumer will buy on these bullets: price, price, looks and price. Vizio has no close competition in terms of overall style and price point from what I can see in some recent retail visits.

It comes as no surprise that the company has sold over two million television sets in the four years since the start of U.S. sales in September 2003. In fact, with the majority of those sets being of the HDTV ilk, Vizio is probably one of the handful of companies that have allowed U.S. consumers to prepare for an all-digital television future once the analog television airwaves are re-purposed in 2009. Vizio even predicts that it will climb past the 3,000,000 sets sold mark by the end of the 2007 holiday shopping season. I'll bet that's a correct guess.

Plasma HDTVs have always seemed to have had a curious target market. Back in 2000, when the industry was really just beginning to explore the possibilities, I was working with a company that sold used goods on eBay. We did a favor for our dotcom bank, helping the account managers liquidate some assets from a bankrupt fellow startup. The prize was a 60-some" plasma screen, which I very quickly sold to a man in Kentucky for a hefty sum. He drove down to pick it up and I learned he had paid his entire monthly paycheck for the giant toy -- but he still lived with his parents, so where else was he going to spend his web designer salary?

Now that 22-year-old web site designers are no longer making six-figure salaries, HDTV manufacturers have had to change their marketing strategy a bit. Instead of marketing to dotcom CEOs and their overpaid, pixel-hungry staffers, they're now marketing to the regular Joe. This is the one who has just enough room left on his credit card for these plasma HDTVs being offered, according to BFads.com, at $1000 and less. Here are just a few of the reported deals we found:

Wal-Mart
42" Widescreen Plasma HDTV -- $988

Target
37" LCD HDTV -- $1097

Best Buy
42" LCD HDTV -- $999

Circuit City
52" Rear-projection HDTV -- $999
40" LCD HDTV -- $999