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Report claims Pioneer to exit TV business: Company refuses to comment

By Erica Ogg on 09 February 2009

The PDP-LX509A, Pioneer's latest 50-inch plasma (Credit: Pioneer)

Pioneer will no longer manufacture televisions and plans to spin off its DVD player business into a joint venture with Sharp, according to a report in Japan's Nikkei newspaper.

The company is reportedly exiting the TV business rather than continue to incur losses in that division. This latest report comes a few months after Pioneer announced it anticipated huge losses at the end of its fiscal year in March and plans to lay off 2,000 workers.

Pioneer said it won't comment on the rumour, but released this statement: "We have publicly announced that we are actively evaluating our business. We started announcing changes in March 2008 to increase efficiencies of our business operations. We are still in that process but do not have any further announcements at this time."

Pioneer had built itself into a widely respected maker of plasma televisions, but last March said it would not make the plasma panels anymore because of sky-rocketing costs and mounting losses in its TV division. It tapped Panasonic to provide the panels instead, but that deal appears now short-lived. Another clue this was coming: Pioneer showed no specific models of TVs at the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month.

Pioneer is not alone among TV makers losing money. Everyone from Panasonic to Samsung to Sony is facing layoffs and large quarterly losses.

Topics: dvd, kuro, pioneer, plasma, sharp, tv

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Comments (2)

  • charleshoyte commented on 14/03/2009 17:46

    Not even in Pioneer Electronics the position of global TV market is very pathetic, & companies are reducing their manpower daily basis. The year has opened with warnings that global market is lurching toward a major economic crisis that will inevitably have far-reaching global ramifications. I hope global market will be survive & the situation of world businesses will improve. So Pioneer should have some patience & wait for good time.
    Charles
    <a href="http://www.fastrealestate.com.au">Real Estate</a>

  • gonno1 commented on 09/02/2009 23:11

    im not surprised.look at the prices they charge for their tvs.they were expensive in the good times.who would buy them now?

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