« Getting Them 3-D, Blu-ray Blues | Main | Mid-Sized LCDs Take Autumnal Equinox As Cue For Price Drop »
Lower Prices For Smaller Screens
Electronics | Sep 22, 09
The last couple of weeks have seen marked declines in the price of mid to small-sized LCD and plasma televisions.
In late August I reported an increase in the price of larger plasma sets (“Sudden Price Spike Demonstrates That, For Plasma Televisions, Size Matters”) but as noted in two recent PriceSCAN press releases, this trend has not translated into price strength for more modest televisons. Indeed, following summer price gains, early September saw a 6.8% decline in the PriceSCAN 40 Inch Plasma TV – 1080p Index. We also witnessed a 3% drop in our LCD TV – 20-29 Inch Index, after three months of relatively stable pricing.
One gets a sense of this looking at the PriceTrend graph of the most popular model of the later diagonal range on this site, Toshiba’s 26AV502R 720p LCD. The lowest vendor price on PriceSCAN for this model has fallen over 10 % since early May..
Time Period: 5/4/2009 through 9/14/2009
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
This price deterioration may reflect consumer caution after a summer increase in confidence (especially for those who are not high-end buyers), and may also be partially driven by retailers marking down mature technologies ahead of the introduction of a new generation of televisions, such as those compatible with 3D Blu-ray (see “Getting Them 3-D, Blu-ray Blues”). In any case, it remains to be seen whether television prices falling with the autumn leaves will be enough to breathe new life into tech retail as we enter the holiday shopping season.
Posted by jeffrey.trester (Permalink)
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.pricescan.com/mtsystem/mt-tb.cgi/242
