Electronic is a highly dynamic market.. so far the only one which have bucked the trend is Apple, who has manged exclusivity to their products thus by enjoying a huge brand image and with that a huge margin on whatever they sells. Apart from that, there is no other brand that has any exclusivity value. So if you want to succeed, there is no point deserting one category, where you are among top 4/5 brands and getting into newer category like handsets, where even players like Sony is finding to get a good enough hold. Samsung is too dynamic in all their product categories. They launches first, they gives features first, they are omni-present in almost all price point. They hardly takes time to adapt to market demand. That's why the visibility of Samy is very high and there is hardly anything within a category (where they are present), they are not offering. They have offered the 64E8500 at the same price, they are offering at US!!! Others instead of trying to garner a larger market share, by offering better goods at a cheaper cost, are trying to figure out how they can stop the import of cheaper TV of their own brand. What stops others to have their own manufacturing facility in India and produce it cheap (someone has reported that 64F8500 is manufactured in India). There is sufficient demand for TVs for them to adopt such a strategy. But they goes for the easy way of importing and selling at a much higher margins. A TV sold at Bangkok stores for 50-60K is getting sold in India at 1 lac. Even with the logistics + import duty the same should have been available here at around 65-80K. But they choose extra high margin of 20-25K, thus making it extremely costly here.
Regarding Samy not introducing 51F8500, is unfortunate, but they are offering the slightly cheaper 51F5500, whose specs are closer to 51F8500. Hope they gets the 51F8500 as well for the enthusiasts at a price enviable to others.
