Sense of anticipation
This year's CES marked the first time a Chinese exec has presented a keynote at the show. The exec in question was Zhou Houjian, the chairman of giant electronics manufacturer Hisense.
If you hadn't heard of it don't worry; neither had we, but Hisense is the market leader in flat-panel TVs in China, a market that is poised to overtake the US as the world's biggest by 2011. So when it announces it plans to go global, that's pretty significant.
In his keynote, Houjian talked about the history of Hisense and examined the still booming Chinese market. It turns out that Hisense is involved in quite diverse industries, including mobile phones, fridges and air conditioning, and had revenues of $8 billion in 2009.
But it's through LED TVs that Hisense is planning its global expansion, with together with its own IPTV platform. A visit to its stand revealed an emphasis on that technology, which Hisense expects to supercede LCD TVs due to the thinner units and greater energy efficiency of LED TVs. We can expect to see Hisense LED TVs launching globally later this year.
