Plasma display panels to arrive this year

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By Martyn Williams

(IDG) -- Bigger is better, but flat is the future. That seems to be the mantra for vendors like Samsung when it comes to television and computer displays.

Samsung Electronics announced on Monday that it will begin selling flat panel television sets based on plasma display panels in Europe and the United States later this year, and will launch a TV with the largest PDP yet.

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The company will begin selling sets equipped with PDPs in Europe in October and in the United States in December, it announced at the IFA show in Berlin.

The lineup will include a set featuring a 63-inch PDP, the largest such display developed to date. Samsung first took the wraps off the monster panel at the CeBIT show in Hanover earlier this year. The company says it was aimed at the professional market, not for use in living rooms -- something underlined by its price tag, which at the time was around $25,000.

The company has already begun selling a 42-inch model in its home market. It previewed 37-inch and 50-inch models at CeBIT.

Chasing the Plasma Promise

Samsung's march into the U.S. and European markets is part of the company's plan to grab a 20 percent share of the world PDP market by 2005. The company said it is targeting sales of 20,000 PDP-based televisions this year, rising to 250,000 units in 2003 and 1 million in 2005.

The market for home and professional use flat-panel monitors and television sets is expanding quickly; many of Japan's major electronics manufacturers are fighting with Samsung for a slice of the market. NEC announced a 61-inch PDP monitor in June, while Pioneer followed in July with the launch of a 50-inch model. Hitachi, guessing that most homes do not have the room for such large displays, launched a 32-inch PDP TV in February this year.