Upstart American TV maker Vizio Inc. has been nipping for three years at the heels of household names such as Sony and Samsung.
Quietly selling its affordable line of flat-panel sets in wholesale club stores instead of electronics retailers, it knocked its foreign competitors from the top spot in the second quarter to become the largest seller of flat-panel TVs in North America.
It is too early to say the company will bring an American brand back to the top ranks of TV makers for good. But Irvine, Calif.-based Vizio is poised to benefit from a variety of trends, including the rising popularity of flat-panel sets and the need for all Americans to upgrade to a digital TV by the federal government's February 2009 deadline.
And CEO William Wang's experience as a supplier and then consultant to PC maker Gateway Inc. convinced him that consumers who might spend big for a feature-laden set for the living room would want a more affordable alternative to replace sets in other rooms.
Aided by a few one-time boosts in retailer inventories, Vizio grabbed 12 percent of the flat-panel market in the second quarter. That was more than four times its share in the year-ago quarter and enough to propel the private company, which had been the nation's 15th-largest flat-panel TV supplier in the second quarter of 2005, past rivals such as Sony Corp., Samsung and Sharp Corp., according to market researcher DisplaySearch.
Source: Associated Press, 9/7/07
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