Why Is the Plasma HDTV Market Dying?

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. The Rise and Fall of the Plasma Empire
  3. Advantages of Plasma Technology
  4. Plasma’s Weaknesses
    1. A Bad Reputation
  5. LCD Advantages
  6. The Retail Problem
  7. Too Far Behind
  8. Plasma Market: A Look Forward
  9. Key Takeaways
  10. About Alfred Poor

1. Summary

In 1998, Philips launched a series of television ads that started to reshape the world’s expectations of what a television set could be. The “Let’s Make Things Better” campaign included spots that showed new, flat screen televisions in enticing settings: on the ceiling of a fancy apartment, in the garage of a home as a drive-in movie theater for two, and in an improbably-small apartment with room for a couch and not much else. Forty-two-inch sets had list prices of about $9,000 back then, at a time when the average picture tube color TV bought by a U.S. consumer cost only $292 according to CEA. True, the plasma sets cost 30 times as much, but they sparked the imagination of TV viewers worldwide.