A major household appliance retailer marked down the prices of plasma display panel televisions significantly in Shanghai yesterday. It hopes the aggressive price stimulate the sale of high-end TV sets.

　　Shanghai Gome Appliance Co started to sell 42-inch PDP color televisions with the lowest price of 14,999 yuan (US$1,807) yesterday at its 12 chain stores in the city, compared with the previous 23,000 yuan.

　　The lowest price of foreign-brand 42-inch PDP televisions has also been dragged down to 19,999 yuan from 25,000 yuan.

　　"It is the minimum price of any PDP TV sets in China's mainland," said Gome in a statement.

　　The veteran home appliance retailer, whose principal marketing trick is cutting prices, said that the motivation for the price cuts on PDP televisions is to popularize the purchase of high-end televisions.

　　"Only when the retail price of PDP television sets is marked below 20,000 yuan can we say that the PDP TV business has come into a valuable market as the product becomes affordable for most consumers," said an official of Gome.

　　The price of PDP TV sets was as high as 260,000 yuan four years earlier when the high-end product debuted in the domestic market.

　　Cathode-ray tube color televisions, which are regarded as traditional TVs that have less sharp pictures than digital TVs, are still the mainstay products in the Chinese market. Its sales comprise 90 percent of total sales volumes generated from the television sector in China, according to Sony Corp.

　　Meanwhile, the retailer has chosen a good time to slash the retail price of PDP televisions, said industry officials.

　　Currently, there are about 350 million television sets in use in China's mainland, most of which were purchased in the mid 1980s.

　　"The life of television sets is 10 to 15 years, which means that many of the 350 million TV sets will be out of use soon," said Lu Renbo, a researcher of the Development Research Center of the State Council, China's cabinet.

　　But the high pricing of high-end televisions have always made consumers shy away from buying PDP or LCD display panel televisions.

　　In addition, as a huge proportion of televisions, which have been used for a decade, will be scrapped soon, the Chinese central government is involved in drawing up rules governing the management on controlling pollutions from scrapped electrical appliances, said Lu.