-Samsung Electronics sees flat sales in 2001
By Lucas van Grinsven
BERLIN, Aug 25 (Reuters) - South Korea's Samsung
Electronics <05930.KS> said on Saturday it does not expect a
sales pick-up before the second half of next year, and hopes
revenues this year will reach last year's levels.
Falling revenues in the semiconductor business should be
offset by strong demand for mobile telephones and digital
consumer electronics, Daeje Chin, chief executive for Samsung's
Digital Media Business, told Reuters in an interview on the
sidelines of the bi-annual IFA consumer electronics show.
"We see some more orders in the third quarter compared with
the second quarter, especially for PCs, monitors and colour TVs.
But that's quarter-on-quarter.," he said.
"It doesn"t mean really we're recovering from the slowness.
Particularly in the IT business. So we see slowness until the
second half of next year."
The world's largest producer of memory chips has been hit
hard by the rapid price falls for those products, down some 80
percent from year-ago levels.
"Semiconductor (sales) are down, because of the price drop.
On a year-to-year basis semiconductors will be lower. But we're
gaining market share and revenues in the digital and telecom
area. So I hope to say that total revenues of Samsung
Electronics will remain at least even (this year), perhaps
(there will be) slight growth," Chin told Reuters.
Chin's business unit generates around one third of Samsung's
sales which reached $33 billion in 2000.
Last month the company reported a second-quarter net profit
of 880 billion won ($675.8 million), down from 1.24 trillion won
in the first, on seven percent lower sales of eight trillion
won.
Samsung launched several new digital products at IFA,
including new digital and flat televisions, portable MP3 music
and video players, and a combination of a VCR and a digital
versatile disc player.
Chin said the retail prices of flat and digital televisions
were still too high for mass market appeal, but said he expected
50 inch projection TVs to drop below the $2,000 threshold next
year, down from 3,000 now.
"That's an important threshold in the U.S." he said.
Samsung, which has become the world's fifth largest producer of
mobile phones in the second quarter of this year, will continue
to hunt for a higher market share in mobile communications, he
said.
South Korea has launched always-on Internet cellphones many
months ahead of the United States and Europe.
Chin also said Samsung would next year bring out a wide
range of handheld computers, so-called personal digital
assistents (PDAs).
"The personal computer business is stagnant. So we have
asked what will be the next product. It could be the PDA. We
will bring out a lot of PDAs next year," he said.
Some of these PDAs would also have an integrated mobile
phone.
((IFA newsroom, +44 7990 56 8825, lucas.grinsven@reuters.com))
REUTERS
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