LG India to double exports

Korean chaebol, LG Electronics, is planning to double its exports from India to about $140 million by 2005, said Kwang Ro Kim, managing director of LG Electronics at the launch of its latest television range here on Thursday.

At present the company has one manufacturing facility at Greater Noida, near Delhi and is setting up another facility in Pune. The Rs 250 crore Pune unit will commence production this year.

This year the company is also looking at Russia and some other countries for export from its Indian operations. The company would sell about half-a-million GSM handsets in India in 2004 and has set a target to sell about 2 million handsets next fiscal. LG had sold about 4 million CDMA handsets last year and is targeting an equal number this year.

The firms today launched a range of Xcanvas plasma TVs, artvision LCD TVs, DLP & LCD rear projection TVs which would be imported from Korea in CBU (completely built unit) form.

The high end models will be sold in marketing alliance with Onkyo and Bowers & Wilkins. They are priced between Rs 40,000 and Rs 3 lakh. The company is setting up high end audio visual concept retail chains called Xcanvas Studio.

The company is planning to sell about 2,000 Xcanvas plasma TVs and about 1,500 LCD TVs in the current fiscal and about 20,000 units and 10,000 units respectively in next fiscal, Kim added.

New marketing head: Consumer durables major, LG Electronics India (LGEIL) has appointed Salil Kapoor as the new marketing head, replacing Anil Arora, with effect from Thursday. Kapoor was earlier the head of LG's airconditioner division.

Arora will now be the company's refrigerators product group head. "This is a routine change which we carry out to get fresh ideas. It is not a reflection of anyone's competence," said YV Verma, senior vice-president LGEIL.

Tops in mobile handsets sales: LG Electronics has overtaken Nokia as the number one in the mobile handsets market in the country, according to a survey conducted by Voice and Data Research Report.

LG Electronics now enjoys 33.5 per cent market share followed by Nokia India with 29.7 per cent, Samsung Electronics 12.9 per cent, Motorola India with 7.6 per cent, Hyundai Curitel with 3.6 per cent, Siemens 2.9 per cent, Sony Ericcson 2.5 per cent, Kyocera 0.7 per cent and other 6.6 per cent.