A Bonanza in TV Sales Fades Away

By now, most Americans have taken the leap and tossed out their old boxy televisions in favor of sleek flat-panel displays. Now manufacturers want to convince those people that their once-futuristic sets are already obsolete.

After a period of strong growth, sales of televisions are slowing. To counter this, TV makers are trying to persuade consumers to buy new sets by promoting new technologies. At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, which opens Thursday, every TV maker will be crowing about things like 3-D and Internet connections — features that have not generated much excitement so far. Unit sales of liquid-crystal and plasma displays were up 2.9 percent in 2010 from the previous year, according to figures from the market researcher DisplaySearch. That is tiny compared with the gains of more than 20 percent in each of the prior three years. Those heady days of the last decade were the result of an unusual set of circumstances. The rise of flat-panel television technologies like plasma and LCD almost perfectly coincided with a government-mandated switchover to digital broadcasting and the availability of high-definition shows and movies — something these new televisions were all ready to display. That sparked a mass migration of consumers from using the old cathode-ray tube television sets to the thinner and lighter plasma and liquid-crystal displays.