Vizio sales 'to rise on new products and markets'
Revenue increase expected by as much as 30%
Taipei : Vizio Inc, the second-biggest US liquid-crystal TV supplier, expects to increase revenue by as much as 30 per cent next year as it expands its markets and products, CEO William Wang said.
"We've launched into Canada and Mexico, which is keeping us pretty busy right now," Wang said in an interview in Taipei. "We're going beyond TV."
Vizio, which lost the lead to Samsung Electronics Co last quarter, posted a 40 per cent increase in high-definition TV sales to more than 280,000 units in the week of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional start to the holiday-selling season. Higher sales of sound bar TV speakers and Blu-ray DVD players will help boost revenue from the $2.5 billion (Dh9.18 billion) it expects to post this year, Wang said.
AmTRAN Technology Co, which is based in Taipei and owns 24 per cent of Vizio's shares, will supply more than half of its products next year, with the remainder to be split between Innolux Display Corp and TPV Technology Ltd, Wang said.
Vizio expects to ship eight million TVs in 2010 after selling six million this year and 3.5 million in 2008, he said.
Privately held Vizio, which is based in Irvine, California, had sales of $2 billion last year, Wang said. The company has sold 60,000 Blu-ray players since it began offering them in September and expects to ship 150,000 next year, he said. Blu-ray is a high-definition format developed by Sony Corp.
Listing Vizio shares on the Nasdaq stock market in 2011 "is a possibility" with the company not yet having a timeline or specific plan for a public offering, Wang said.
The firm shipped 1.24 million LCD TVs last quarter taking 15.7 per cent of the market and trailing Samsung's 16.8 per cent, industry researcher iSuppli Corp said in a November press release.
