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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (1286)	11/8/2003 1:59:16 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

China moves out of shadows as maker of televisions, other electronics ELAINE KURTENBACH Canadian Press Saturday, November 08, 2003 SHANGHAI (AP) - Only two decades ago, it was a small electronics workshop in a warehouse. Now it's an industry powerhouse poised to displace Sony Corp. as the world's No. 1 television maker. The growth of TCL is a homegrown success story of modern China, where manufacturers are elbowing leading Japanese electronics giants aside. Just as Sony and Panasonic once edged out top American brands, Chinese brand names like TCL, Haier, Konka and Midea are positioning themselves for a broader push into world markets. While they still sound unfamiliar to western consumers, they've already gained a foothold in Asia. Now they're positioning themselves for a broader push into world markets. On Tuesday, TCL International Holdings Inc. and Thomson SA, the French company that owns the U.S. television brand RCA, announced a joint venture to produce 18 million TV sets and up to four million DVD players a year. Annual revenues are forecast to exceed $3.49 billion. Thomson now sells seven million RCA televisions a year worldwide, including some under the GE brand in the United States. TCL, China's second-biggest maker of TVs and cellphones, exports about a third of the 10 million sets it makes each year. TCL was founded in 1980 in Huizhou, an electronics export base in southern China's Guangdong province. At the time, U.S. giants like RCA were beginning to shift their manufacturing to the cheap-labour operations of Mexico. But China's economics soon lured manufacturers there. According to official Chinese estimates, the average manufacturing wage is 61 cents US an hour, compared with about $2.50 in Mexico and $16 in the United States. "Consumer electronics left the United States long ago, and now production is being consolidated in China," said Andy Rothman, China strategist for CLSA Emerging Markets. "There clearly is a shift to China as a major manufacturing platform for world consumption." The Chinese government is encouraging Chinese companies to expand overseas, partly to counter rising trade friction. Saturated, intensely competitive markets at home are another factor forcing manufacturers into foreign markets. At department stores like Shanghai's vast New World Emporium, TCL vies for attention with a slew of international names like Samsung and Sony - as well as domestic rivals Sichuan Changhong, which is now China's top TV maker, and Konka Group Co., No. 3. While Japan's ascendance as an export power meant doom for some U.S. television manufacturers, technically advanced multinationals like Sony and Panasonic are unlikely to be done in by their Chinese competitors. Sony, struggling to keep its own television operation competitive in a market shifting to flat-panel technology, might look for a joint venture of its own in China, says David Satterwhite, managing director for Economist Conferences in Tokyo. "On the other hand, they're so advanced in other technologies that they may well cede the television sector without a fuss," he says. canada.com