Panasonic To Exit From Plasma TV Business

Japan based consumer electronics giant Panasonic is considering to withdraw from manufacturing of plasma televisions as a part of its television business downsizing. The consumer electronics maker has been in a troubling financial position for sometime, where they had no choice but to sell away assets, including their real estate.

According to its business plan that would be announced on March 28th, Panasonic will start this process over a 3 year period starting fiscal year from April as reported by Japan based business daily “Nikkei”. Panasonic’s main TV Plasma plant in Amagaski in Western Japan will halt products around fiscal 2014 and has already put the value of their production equipment at the three buildings.

According to Jiji Press, Panasonic will be also withdrawing from healthcare business, along with selling its healthcare unit and its buildings.

Panasonic suffered so much because of slumping sales due to global economic slowdown and also faced huge restructuring costs. Last month, Panasonic record a 9 month operating profit of USD 1.29 Billion despite facing significant net loss all thanks to fixed cost reductions and streamlining material costs. But because of the weak demand in flat panel TV business, sales went down at 8.8% which made a loss of 5.44 Trillion yen.

A Panasonic spokesperson said,”We are considering a number of options regarding our TV business. But nothing has been decided yet.”

As of now, the Japanese firm already halted their new development of plasma TVs. The company also decided that both plasma and LCD TV models will be an inefficient business, especially in Japan. Since even flat-TV market is shrinking as said by Panasonic, we may see a dark day when one of the most respected and deemed underrated by many end-users would be shutting down their plasma TV operations for good, even ending the era of the good old plasma TVs.

Source: Reuters  | Financial Express