World Cup fever expected to rock 5 lakh TV sales

Television sellers are expecting about 500,000 more unit sales on the occasion of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and Eid-ul Fitr, amounting to almost half of the country's total annual consumption this year.

Top TV brands said roughly seven to eight hundred thousand television units are sold in the market annually, with a 30 percent growth this year because of the upcoming football mega show.

Md Nahid Hasan, marketing manager-Samsung customers' electronics business at Transcom Electronics Ltd said "Before every World Cup we usually get two-three times higher sales than the regular market trade pattern. However, this year market is going slow but World Cup sales started from September last year so that is a positive sign of the market."He also said technology has changed tremendously and some big players establishing their own factories have pushed prices down and increased the quality of the products due to competition.

Transcom Electronics has established a television plant last year in the capital with a capacity to produce about 500 TV sets every day. As the market is maturing, international brands are competing for customers while giving them more options during purchase. Transcom is putting up exciting offers for football fans, with discounts ranging from Tk. 2,000/- all the way to Tk. 50,000/-. Customers can get a code and use it to send an SMS for the discount amount.

Edward Kim, managing director of LG Bangladesh, said the television market is growing fast and as this year Eid and World Cup comes together, it will boost the market significantly. Kim said the market focus has already shifted to basic LED TVs from CRT TVs and now it is shifting to smart LED TVs. "LED is popular in both urban and rural areas but smart LED TVs are getting popularity in big cities like Dhaka, Chittagong, and Sylhet as faster internet access is also spreading to those areas," Kim added. He said the overall television market growth rate is about 25 percent and yearly sales quantity is six to seven hundred thousand units.

Apart from the locally assembled brands, most of the TV units are imported from China and few from Taiwan and Korea.

Nurul Afser, director of Electromart, who are assembling two brands - Konka and Haiko in the country, said they are not getting as much business as they anticipated, but market picks up before the World Cup.

"The market is valued at about four thousand crore Taka and every year it is growing significantly with quite a satisfactory rate," said Afser.

However, brands are also suffering from grey market and parallel imported products. LG's managing director mentions this as a big challenge for them. Though the television market has huge potential in Bangladesh, there is still a big problem with low grade and substandard TV sets, said Kim. "Many Chinese electronic products are sold here at cheap prices and some people have the idea that counterfeit electronic products won't last long and new models will arrive soon, there is no point of buying a high-end product instead of the cheaper Chinese products." In this way of thinking people lose money, time and quality experience as low-quality products last for a very short time. Customers have to buy the same products again and again and it costs more money and time than durable products, said industry insiders.

Of the local brands, Minister and MyOne are playing in the low range segment and they are also suffering from the non-branded and grey market products, said MA Razzak Khan, Chairman and Managing Director of the company that started assembling locally from 2006.

All the local and global brands are offering price discounts, cash back, travel tickets and gift cards to boost their sales ahead of the World Cup, which is only two weeks away.