Audio Video News

In a report from the Nikkei and Kyodo news agency in Japan on Saturday, Pioneer is said to be quitting the plasma-TV business altogether—not just getting out of panel manufacturing and handing it over to Panasonic, but abandoning its TV business entirely. The global economic downturn, plummeting demand, and fierce competition led the company to take the drastic action in order to stem growing losses, which are expected to reach almost $850 million in the home-electronics division this fiscal year.

In addition, DVD-player operations will be shifted to a new joint venture with Sharp, though nothing is mentioned about Blu-ray. The report goes on to say that Pioneer will be staking its future on its car-electronics business, which generates more than half of its total revenue.

Officially, Pioneer isn't saying much yet. "As a matter of policy, we cannot comment on rumors or speculation," according to Andy Parsons, a senior member of the company's corporate communications team. "As you know, we have publicly announced that we are actively evaluating our business. We started announcing changes in March, 2008 to increase efficiencies of our business operations. We are still in that process but do not have any further announcements at this time."

For more on this, see Fred Manteghian's blog about it.