Tech behind the brand shift

INTERFACE

When a die-hard Japanese fan buys a South Korean product.

In 1994, I paid Rs 21,000 for my first television. It was a 21-inch BPL and it served me well for close to eight years before the pictures started quivering and the news readers looked like being tickled by some one. I bought the BPL because I am a big sucker for Japanese technology and though I was absolutely ignorant about how the thing worked I knew that BPL had a tie-up with Sanyo.

And Sony was not selling televisions yet in India. If you are yet to place me, let me tell you that I think happiness is a Japanese watch, a Japanese car, a Japanese music system and a Japanese colour television.

So when I had had enough of tickled news readers I decided to trade the BPL for a brand new Panasonic. Mind you a Flat 21 which also played five FM radio staions too for Rs 12,000. I bought a Panasonic because, you guessed it right, it was Japanese and because an equivalent Sony cost almost double the money. That same day, I decided that soon I will buy myself a Sony 29-inch flat television.

That day came just after moving into my new house. It was one of those water-logging days in Mumbai and I decided to skip work and go TV shopping.

By evening I was watching Azzuri stunning the Germans at the world cup semis on a 29-inch, flat Samsung with, apparently, DNie technology. Blistering Hyundai, thundering Daewoos...a South Korean product? In My home? Well, close friends disowned me and my wife started searching the web for symptoms of early senility.

Well, readers, I had done my research you see, and it had taken me only 15 minutes that I spent at a massive electronic store that stored everything from colour televisions to egg-beaters.

You see, the Samsung with the DNie technology cost Rs 17,500 as against the comparable Sony that cost Rs 26,000. And a quick phone call to my friend who knows everything about anything that can be plugged and played and I had the answer.

According to him the only thing that I need to decide was whether I needed a hi-fi television or at least 100 Hertz television. I cut the line, wore a know-it-all face and demanded a presentation.

Well both LG and Philips had 100 Hertz televisions and while the images looked marginally better the price was not "� they cost a whopping eight grand over the Samsung. And as for the Hi-fi TV, the salesman politely warned me that while he can sell me one, none of the channels in India offer hi-fi telecast "� not for now.

I called my friend again who told me to splurge on the Sony if only I have an ego thing since technologically the South Korean product had an edge. He also added that the Sony may last long enough to prevent me from buying an LCD TV when the prices eventually drop.

So the big question was to whether spend Rs 8,500 more on Sony for the name tag and get stuck with it for time immemorial (they really last, my friend added) or buy a Samsung that matched the Sony in picture and sound quality (to get the best sound in a Sony you need to buy the ancillary speaker kit....and you thought Sony knew the plug and play generation?) to my eyes and ears. And I did the unthinkable.

To sum up, it is no wonder that Samsung is walloping Sony in most developing markets, including India - they have invested in technology all right, but they seem to know the sensibilities of traditional as well as new buyers and looks like they are attacking both at the same time.Well, if Sony has not managed to sell a television to a Japanese product fanatic like me in all these years, in my book, they have failed miserably in India.

PS: Did you know that Hyundai ranked ahead of Toyota and Honda in a recent JD Power study in USA?