New Delhi, Apr 25: The colour television industry is unlikely to reach the 10 million unit sales mark this year even as the prices have eroded by another 8-10 per cent and there are a host of promotional offers across the segments. "The industry is not expected to go beyond 9-9.2 million units this year. We had targeted 10 million unit sales by 2004 but this target is unlikely to be met... The first time buyers are not coming in numbers the industry had expected," director at Samsung India, Ravinder Zutshi told here.

He also pointed out that while the worldover, flat screens contributed at least 40 per cent of the total CTV portfolio, the Indian industry was still struggling with flats accounting for only about 20 per cent of the total sales. The main culprit for this, he said, was higher prices for flats since most flat picture tubes were being imported.

"At Samsung, we have devised a strategy whereby flat screen CTV sales will account for a healthy 50 per cent of the total sales by 2005," Zutshi added.

He said the colour picture tube availability scenario was steadily improving with Samtel and others beginning the production of flat CPTs in India. In the near future, prices of flat screen TVS were likely to come closer to curved screen ones, he added. Bureau Report