LG Electronics Sees 12% Rise in '09 Sales in Bulgaria, Targets at Least Same Growth Rate in '10

“We will be very active, very aggressive in mobile phones and consumer electronics sales […] and we can revise forecasts upwards in the year’s second half,” LG Electronics consumer electronics marketing and sales manager for Bulgaria Ivan Ivanov told reporters.

Company officials provided no sales figures.

According to estimates the worst of the crisis will last until the end of June and then the economy will start recovering, which in turn will help the market to partly recover from the serious drop this year, Ivanov said.

The local electronics market is estimated to fall by 20% this year as compared to 2008. The market is estimated at approximately 1.0 billion levs ($0.73 billion/0.51 billion euro) annually, Ivanov said, without making clear if the estimation refers to this or last year. A small share, of almost one percent, of the market's value is in the grey economy, he added.

The mobile phones market was the worst hit by the crisis as its annual drop for 2009 is estimated at between 30% and 40%. Wholesale prices of cell phones were cut by an average 15%, LG Electronics marketing and sales manager for Bulgaria Dimitar Valev said.

LG Electronics says it has a 30% market share in consumer electronics, which ranks it the second-largest player on the local market. It will aim to raise the market share to 35% next year.

In mobile phone sales, the company has achieved a 50% rise succeeding to get a 10% market share, which ranks it third on the local market. “We plan a 50% increase in market share on this segment, to 15% next year," Valev told SeeNews.

In the home appliances segment, the company has a market share of some six-eight percent as domestic consumers are rather European-oriented and prefer to buy appliances produced by European manufacturers.

“We cannot expect a serious rise in this market share due to high eco fees which clients pay," Ivanov told SeeNews.

LG Electronics (www.lge.com), headquartered in South Korea, was set up in 1958. It is a global leader and technology innovator in consumer electronics, mobile communications and home appliances, employing more than 84,000 people. It has five business units - Home Entertainment, Mobile Communications, Home Appliance, Air Conditioning and Business Solutions - and reported global sales of $44.7 billion (31.1 billion euro) in 2008.

LG Electronics opened its trading unit in Bulgaria in March 2006.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)