The electronics giant sees overall India sales growth falling to 35 percent from 46 percent in this financial year as consumers cut back on purchases, Masaru Tamagawa, managing director of Sony India said.
Sony Corp. counts China, India, Brazil and Russia as key markets to drive growth.
“We are definitely expecting a slight slowdown in India in this financial year. There will be some slowdown in the flat panel TV segment, but we are very optimistic about growth from our laptops segment,” Tamagawa said.
Sony India makes products such as the ‘Bravia’ range of flat panel TV, the ‘VAIO’ range of laptops and computers, the ‘Cyber-shot’ range of digital cameras along with other household, commercial, and gaming appliances.
In February, the company had said it aimed to increase its market share in the flat panel TV segment to 40 percent from 35 percent this year buoyed by sales during the cricket world cup.
The company did not share details of the revenue contribution of the flat panel segment to Sony India’s total sales.
However, the consumer durables maker was optimistic of driving growth in this fiscal year through laptop sales, saying it expects the sales to double to 500,000 units in 2011/12.
VAIO contributes 20 percent to the total sales revenue of Sony India and the company plans to invest 500 million rupees in promotional expenditure to boost sales of its newly launched products under this segment, Tamagawa said.
The firm has earmarked advertising and promotional expenditure of 3.6 billion rupees ($80.5 million) for the current financial year to end-March 2012.
Sony India, which began operations in 1994, competes with the Indian units of Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, among others.
It plans to add 30 new flagship stores to its existing 270 and hopes to start 50 new VAIO stores in India — all under the franchisee model — in the current fiscal year.