OREANDA-NEWS. March 14, 2011. TCL Multimedia (1070.HK) reported its operation results for 2010. The report shows that, during the reporting period, the company sold 7.464 million sets of LCD TV and achieved sales of RMB 23.453 billion. Resulting from business restructuring in North America and structural adjustment of strategic OEM customers, as well as the failure to take full advantage of market opportunities on TV product transition in the first half and gross margin compression caused by inventory clean-up by cutting prices in a later period, multimedia business suffered a net loss of RMB 857 million throughout the year, reported the press-centre of TCL.

In view of sales volume, 7.464 million sets of LCD TV were sold throughout the year, down 10% on a year-on-year basis. However, the emerging markets, European and Chinese markets showed good performance. Sales volume in these markets all increased to varied extent. Thanks to the Household Appliances Subsidy Scheme of Chinese Government and effective marketing strategies, the company’s sales volume in Chinese market throughout the year totaled 5.1236 million sets, up by 10.7%, and its sales volume rose by 194.2% and 27.6% in the emerging markets and the European market respectively.

The company’s share in Chinese Internet TV market was 23.5% and it retained its position as a market leader. 843,300 sets of backlight LCD TV were sold throughout the year, accounting for 11.3% of LCD TV sales in volume. As the company further improved its structure of production lines, the proportion of backlight LCD TV significantly increased in the fourth quarter, accounting for 27.6% in December.

In view of product R&D, the company launched a total of 66 models in 2010, including 3D series, LED series and the first V10 in the industry, as well as P60 and P50 ultra-thin LCD TV series. As the first domestic appliance enterprise laying out in Internet TV, the company successively launched MiTV, Internet LED TV and Internet 3D TV, and successfully developed its first domestic Android-based smart TV, which broadened the application scope of Internet TV to the greatest extent. TCL’s smart TV was also honored with “2010 China Industrial Product Innovation Award for audio and video products”. Meanwhile, the company continued to enrich the content of Internet TV applications.

The company established partnership with licensed CNTV to co-build the Internet TV laboratory. It also achieved strategic cooperation with WASU in Hangzhou to provide users with massive genuine video contents. The company launched the “Huan TV” platform and became the benchmark in domestic Internet TV systems. Based on the above cooperation, the content platform of TCL Internet TV has already gained superiority and possessed rich Internet features such as online viewing, video downloads, online education, Kara OK, somato sensory games, and information express.

In addition, the mass production of LED backlight accelerated the transformation pace of TCL TV products, the LED-based Internet TV and Blue-ray TV series were more abundant and the product structure has been optimized. With the 8.5-generation LCD panel production line put into operation in 2011, the company’s product competiveness will be substantially enhanced to further promote product sales.

TCL Multimedia said, the company will stick to its marketing strategy of product diversification and the management approach of standardization. It will further optimize the speed of market response and operational efficiency, and gradually improve the global supply chain and upgrade product R&D capabilities. With the vertical integration strategy of the LCD TV industry further strengthened, the company’s competitiveness in the LCD TV arena will be enhanced continuously. In the future, the company will seize the market demand generated by “network convergence” in the 12th Five-Year Program, give full play to their own layout advantages in LCD TV industry chain and Internet contents, actively explore new sales channels to improve the comprehensive competiveness and promote the steady development of business performance.