Vizio Continues To Grow

More good news from the upstart little-TV-company-that-could.

The Retail Bridge: Vizio Continues To Pick Up Market Share

Despite the sinking U.S. economic situation, HDTV maker Vizio reported Tuesday that its products accounted for more than 10 percent of all North American flat panel TV sales in the third quarter, placing the low-cost maker third behind Samsung and Sony in terms of overall flat panel TV shipments.What's more, the company continued its upward year-over-year trend by selling more than 800,000 units in the quarter. Given this growth and its position among value-oriented shoppers, Vizio said it expects to post a 50 percent quarter-to-quarter increase this year for Q4 on particularly strong holiday sales.

In a way, Vizio is like the Hyundai Motors of the video world: initially they were cheap and poorly regarded, but the company worked hard to improve their quality while still delivering low price points, winning fans and converts in the process.

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Vizio Strives For Greenest Televisions

Vizio, the upstart little-TV-maker-that-could is pushing the envelope with regard to energy consumption.

Electronic House: Vizio Adds 32-inch EcoHD to Energy Friendly LCDs

The comapny has announced that all of its LCD models now shipping to the U.S. and Canada meet or exceed Energy Star 3.0 requirements. Nine
of Vizio’s models exceed the Energy Star rating by 25 percent, the company says, and all of them are RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) compliant too.
The 22-inch and 19-inch LCD models even consume less energy than a standard 60w light bulb, Vizio says.

It almost goes without saying, but that appeals to my frugal nature.

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Vizio seeks to rebadge as a "high-end" TV company

Vizio, the TV brand that other brands love to hate, is looking to make some changes.

CE Pro: Vizio Rebrands From Discount to ‘High End at Affordable Price’

According to ONE/x, Vizio's ad agency, Vizio will soon be marketing a surround-sound system with a wireless subwoofer for HDTVs. Vizio previewed the sound bar at CES earlier this year and says it will "compete with products from Sony, Samsung and others.""We want consumers to associatepremiere audio quality, along with images, when they think about Vizio," says Jason Wulfsohn, creative director at ONE/x Wulfsohn.

To date, Vizio has achieved market hegemony by catering to the "good enuff" market. Performance-wise their displays are hardly stellar, but they're cheap.

However, I'll be the first to admit that while I'm a huge video snob, I see things that regular consumers either can't see, or simply don't care enough to pay more for. For an awful lot of Sam's Club shoppers, good enough is "good enuff."

That said, regardless of "high-end" or "low-end" designations, if their TV's lacks discrete codes for programming them that means that it's a "retail" TV as opposed to a custom channel one.

However, Vizio seems to be happy with how they've positioned their products, so bully for them.

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Vizio goes from "Who?" to "Top TV brand in US" in one year

Call it a Jack the Giant Killer story.

The Retail Bridge: Vizio Now Top Selling Brand Of HDTVs in The U.S.

"Vizio's rise from the number 15 flat panel TV brand in
Q2'05 to number one in Q2'07 is quite remarkable given the intense competition
in this market and can be attributed to its unique channel strategy," said
DisplaySearch president Ross Young. "Its warehouse club channel focus and lack
of channel conflicts enabled the company to get to disruptive price points which
helped fuel the rapid rise of the warehouse club channel in the U.S. TV market
and caused its shipments to surge.
...
According to the report, Vizio currently claims 12.1
percent of the LCD market and 11.9 percent of overall flat panel HDTV sales (LCD
and plasma). In terms of year-over-year growth, the company jumped 340 percent
in market share since last year. Samsung and Sharp roll out the top three with
11.3 percent and 7.9 percent of the market, respectively.

The lesson here is that brand snobs have sneered at Vizio for being a nobody, but Vizio's disciplined distribution strategy of aggressively catering to the price club and low-end retail channels have allowed them to hopscotch "name" brands for the #1 spot. Contrast that focus with other "name-brand" televisions whose manufacturers want to have their cake and eat it too: who want to see their televisions not only in price clubs and general goods retailers, but also big box CE stores and specialty boutiques! It doesn't work that way: all emphasis equals no emphasis.

Vizio may be a low end television, but as an observer once said about advertising, no one has ever lost out by pandering to the lowest common denominator in America. Vizio knows what they are, and play to their strengths, and the results speak for themselves.

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