Matsushita Plans Big Hike in LCD TV Sales

TOKYO (Reuters) - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd aims to raise global sales of flat-panel TVs to 11 million units in the year to end-March 2009, up more than 40 percent on a year earlier, a business daily said on Sunday.

If it meets the target, the Japanese electronics company will have the third-largest share of the global flat-panel TV market, after South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co and Japan's Sony Corp, the Nikkei daily said.

It currently has the sixth-largest share.

The Panasonic maker hopes to boost global sales of plasma display panel TVs by about 40 percent to over 6 million units, while increasing sales of LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs by more than half to about 5 million units.

Matsushita Electric plans to achieve its aim by expanding the production capacity of its factories in Russia and China, as well as boosting its sales network in the United States, the daily said.

The company hopes to increase its total global sales for flat-panel TVs by 30 percent to 1.3 trillion yen ($12.45 billion), the daily said.

(Reporting by Miho Yoshikawa; Editing by Ramthan Hussain)