VILNIUS - Siauliu Tauro Televizoriai (Siauliai TV Works), the only TV manufacturer in the Baltic states, announced last week that it intended to launch production of digital TV sets in May.
Siauliai TV Works, located in northwestern Lithuania, said the new digital TVs would be capable of receiving digital signals in all formats and that there would be no equivalent TV sets in Europe, the Verslo Zinios daily reported last week.
The launching of digital TV set production, which will be carried out in cooperation with Finnish and German investors, is a half-year behind schedule.
Still, CEO Rimantas Zukauskas said that Siauliai TV Works hoped that the digital sets with LCD will account for 50 percent of the factory's output in 2007.
In 2006 the company sold 1.2 million TV sets, of which a meager 23,200 were sold in Lithuania.
In 2006, after much delay, Siauliai TV Works launched production of TV sets with LCD displays, and these sets comprised 35 percent of the company's output last year.
Zukauskas said the company would step up marketing activities in Lithuania, where the market for new TV sets is some 140,000 units per year.
Siauliai TV Works was established in 1994 on the site of a factory that originally began assembling TVs in 1961.
