Vizio--which employs just 90 people in a southern suburb of Los Angeles--is the No. 1 brand for North American LCD (liquid crystal display) TV shipments for the second quarter in a row. Vizio has a
13% share, followed by Samsung with 12.8%, Sharp with 12% and Sony with 10.1%. It has won its leadership by beating its rivals on price and selling through warehouse club channels such as
Costco.
Vizio cannot compete with the massive R&D budgets of its big rivals and assembles its TVs from other manufacturers' parts. But the quality and design of the sets have been
praised.
But research firm iSuppli noted that Vizio's lead narrowed markedly in the third quarter as the bigger makers introduced new models and increased their market share from the second
quarter by two to four percentage points. Sony, for example, began offering cheaper LCD TVs with non-Sony parts in Wal-Mart stores.
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