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To: Peter V who wrote (28106)	1/14/1998 9:26:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Like DVD, VCD doesn't record. Yet VCD is impacting the VCR market... SLUGGISH VCR MARKET EXPECTED IN CHINA IN 1998 01/13/98 Asia Pulse (c) Copyright 1998 Asia Pulse PTE Ltd. BEIJING, Jan 13 Asia Pulse - China's video cassette recorder market is expected to be sluggish in 1998 with the market demand falling to 2.5 million sets, predict experts from the Ministry of Electronics Industry. Statistics showed that the annual growth rate of China's sales of VCR from late 1980s to early 1990s reached more than 100%. But it slowed down to 15% in 1994. The sales have been falling since the beginning of 1996. Five of the nine VCR manufacturers in China have stopped production and the remaining four produced only 684,000 sets in the first half of 1997, down over 20% from the same 1996 period. Experts attributed the decrease of the sales of VCR on domestic market to the following three factors: 1. The operation of present models of VCR is complicated and many of its functions such as recording were seldom used by the users; 2. There are few new VCR cassette tapes on the market and their prices are high which affected the expansion of VCR sales; 3. The VCR market is seriously affected by the rapid development of VCD industry. Under such conditions, the experts propose that the domestic VCR manufacturers should make efforts in the following three aspects to tide over the difficulties: 1. To develop new models of VCRs which are easy to operate such as "Foolproof" VCRs. At present China has over 20 kinds of television program journals which can print a kind of code for easy recording of each program. By popularizing such code for recording TV program, VCRs will become as popular as color television sets; 2. To develop and produce more video cassette tapes on recreation and education. Meanwhile, China should strive to develop video cassette leasing industry; 3. International VCR market should be explored. The international VCR market is brisk while China's market is in slump. At present the annual world sales of VCR has reached 50 million sets; 4. The prices of VCR should be cut down by reducing the production cost. China invested three billion yuan in 1992 for the technical upgrading of VCR production in nine enterprises. The annual production capacity has reached 1.8 million VCR cores and 3.5 million sets of complete machines. The localization rate of VCR production reached over 40%. All this has laid a foundation for the rebounding of China's VCR industry, the experts said.