Vizio, an aggressive marketer of lower-cost HDTV sets, had the best-selling products in the flat-panel LCD-TV category for the first quarter, according to research firm iSuppli.
The company's share of North American LCD-TV unit shipments rose to 21.6% in the period, up from 13.8% in the fourth quarter of 2008, iSuppli said.
North American LCD-TV shipments in the first quarter were 6.3 million units, up 10.5% from a year ago, indicating the LCD-TV market remains strong despite the economic downturn that has hurt sales of most other consumer-electronics products, according to the research firm.
Vizio's market share has risen dramatically since the recession's onset, according to iSuppli principal analyst Riddhi Patel. "With budgets becoming increasingly tight, consumers are finding the company's inexpensive sets more alluring," she said.
In the first quarter, Vizio's lowest average selling price for a 42-inch 60-Hz refresh rate full-HD LCD-TV was $850. By comparison, 40-inch LCD-TVs from Samsung Electronics and Sony with the same configurations carried average selling prices of $1,000 and $1,090 respectively.
