Plasma manufacturers are struggling to get the green message out to consumers

The future of plasma TV has been hotly debated ever since big LCD screens muscled their way into the market, but will 2009 go down in history as the year that plasma finally died?

Figures released by market researchers reveal a pronounced decline in both sales and manufacturing for the once popular format, and several key brands such as Pioneer and Hitachi have fled the space in recent years as consumers defect to thinner, lower energy consumption display formats.

According to year-on-year quarterly sales figures just released by retail market analyst GfK, while LCD continued to increase its market share, unit sales of plasma slid 15.4 per cent and accounted for less than a quarter of all flat-screen TV sales.

The figures also reveal that, since January, the total sales value of plasma TVs in Australia fell by almost 9 per cent while LCD made solid gains of 10 per cent.

Bing Lee general manager, Phil Moujaes, said that manufacturers of LCD televisions had made dramatic strides in recent years.

“They can now can handle action and sport much better. From that perspective there has been a massive improvement.”

He said people were buying LCDs because overall demand remained stronger for smaller screens, “but if you look at large screens, plasmas are still going very strongly”, he said.

He said the choice between LCD and plasma generally came down to price, “and larger screen plasmas are still more affordable than larger screen LCDs”.

Samsung, one of the three largest television manufacturers still making plasma TVs, said that, although demand was flattening, it had retained a big stake in the technology since launching the world's thinnest plasma display (2.5 centimetres), and integrating wireless technologies and internet television into recent models.

“Plasma accounts for 25-30 per cent of the market, which means there is still a very large market there,” said Evan Manolis, a senior product manager for Samsung's audio-visual unit in Australia.

“There are still a lot of people that really love the look of plasma, the softness of the screen, the [rich] blacks and the capacity to handle motion. So the big challenge for plasma is the drive towards energy consumption as consumers become more aware of the environment. We have reduced plasma energy consumption by 40 per cent compared with 2007 models,” he said.

Plasma may still rule in the big-screen stakes, but according to global manufacturing data from research group Gartner, this situation may not last with LCD expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 28 per cent until 2012, compared with 8.1 per cent for plasma.

“Plasma led the market in the 30-inch TV segment until 2003, but the situation changed in late 2004 as LCD panel vendors activated their sixth-generation production lines.”

The researcher said that for 40-inch and above screen sizes, LCDs had "competed more strongly against plasma" since the opening of seventh-generation production lines in 2005 with the gap in capability gradually widening in favour of LCD TVs.