LG Electronics vice-president Havis Kwon with the 71-inch plasma television in New Delhi on Tuesday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, June 21: Here?s the ultimate for ultra-rich couch potatoes ? a nearly 6 ft- wide plasma television, the biggest of its kind in India.

The television has an even bigger price tag ? a cool Rs 30 lakh.

LG Electronics India Limited (LGEIL) today launched the giant 71-inch TV, India?s largest and costliest plasma display panel (PDP).

The market for such expensive televisions is narrow, but is growing. ?The high-end TV market, which includes plasma display panels, has a growth rate of 50 per cent,? said Philips managing director K. Ramachandran. Even Philips is concentrating on this segment.

Others players also want to enter this niche market. ?We will launch a larger display panel within this year,? a Samsung spokesperson said.

Samsung already has a 63-inch TV set that costs Rs 9.5 lakh.

The two Korean companies have been engaged in a dogfight for the Indian television market with Dutch electronic giant Philips, Japanese major Sony and local players Videocon and Onida, besides Chinese entrants like Haier.

The colour television market in India is estimated at 9.5 million sets a year. Flat televisions with conventional colour picture tubes account for 40 per cent of this. Flat panel or Plasma and LCD televisions, which are the costliest among television sets, are a far smaller segment accounting for under 5 per cent of sales.

But this segment is the fastest growing one, especially when it is compared with normal colour television market growth of 8-10 per cent.

Companies are focusing on the high-end segment despite the low volumes as prices are high. This means value and growth yields are far higher than normal.

?We sell only 10,000 units, including PDP and LCD sets. But there is a visible growth in this segment as well,? said Deba Ghoshal, head of brand management and product planning at LG.

LG today also introduced a 15-inch wireless LCD television priced at Rs 99,000. This television has a wireless connectivity of up to 50 metres and a battery life of two hours.

The screen is wirelessly connected to a transmitter box housed within 50 metres of the television which sends waves to the portable screen.