By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff reporter
Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of flat-screen televisions, has upped its global sales target for 2010 to reflect bullish expectations from the strengthening market.
The previous target announced by the company in January was 39 million TVs, but the company is now saying that 45 to 50 million could be reachable.
``The robust demand for light-emitting diode (LED) and 3D LED-backlit liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions is inspiring confidence and this explains our decision to improve our sales target by around 28 percent,’’ said Yoon Boo-keun, who heads Samsung’s visual display division.
``Panels for 3D televisions are still in tight supply, but we will see a balance between demand and supply sometime during August. We still maintain our global sales target for 2.6 million 3D TVs,’’ he said.
Yoon said that the newer, feature-packed models are forcing a paradigm shift in the television market and it will be important for Samsung to developed localized content for each region to fuel its product sales.
``Applications in televisions should be different from those used in smartphones. By boosting local content providers, Samsung will expand the number of applications for televisions to several hundred by the end of this year from the 120 or more that are available now,’’ Yoon said.
Questioned on whether Sony’s release of the Google TV platform later this year would be a threat, Yoon said the company isn’t expecting an immediate impact.
``Samsung may introduce televisions based on Google platforms, but that would depend on the market situation,’’ he said.