LG to increase TV and mobile phone production

Our Corporate Bureau
09 February 2006

Chennai: The Rs7,500-crore consumer durables major LG Electronics India Private Limited (LGEIL) is planning to increase the colour television output by 20 per cent this year over last year's production of 4 million units.

According to Kwang Ro Kim, managing director, the market trend is in favour of flat screen televisions. "Nearly 60 per cent of the television purchasers go in for flat screen units and our production too will be in line with that."

Given this position, LG Electronics India is slowly cutting down the production of the conventional colour televisions. The company is bringing down the number of conventional picture tube televisions in tune with the market preference.

Similarly, for its refrigeration products, the company is expanding the range of premium refrigerators; it has launched the 751-litre DIOS model with three doors (two at the top and one at the bottom for the freezer) priced at Rs1.30 lakh. Prior to the launch, the company had only the two-door model and sold around 800 units in 2005.

LGEIL is also increasing the production of mobile phones at its 1-million unit capacity Pune facility. Last year the company sold four lakh CDMA instruments and 12 lakh GSM phones. According to Kim, the target for this year is 30 lakh CDMA units and 50 lakh GSM units.

Towards the target LG has launched four new GSM hand sets of which three are in the high end and the other in mid-price segment) taking its product portfolio to 14 hand set models and plans to add another 18 models this year.