Domestic shipments of DVD machines jumped 84.4 percent in June from a year earlier to 264,000 units, an industry association said Wednesday.
The Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association partly attributed the increase to demand associated with the World Cup soccer finals.
The association also attributed the strong rise to a surge of consumers seeking to replace their videocassette recorders with DVD units featuring VCR functions.
Shipments of high-end recording DVD units accounted for 45 percent of all DVD shipments in value terms in the April-June quarter.
Shipments of plasma display panels rose 270.9 percent to 15,000 units in June, while those of liquid-crystal display TVs increased 40.9 percent to 87,000 units. These figures were also attributed to World Cup fever.
Shipments of VCRs fell 26.6 percent to 331,000 units, however, down for the 16th consecutive month.
In the January-June period, shipments of plasma display panels, mostly used for TV sets, totaled 65,000 units, a 4.3-fold increase on the same period a year earlier.
Shipments of TVs with LCD panels in the first six months of 2002 grew to 464,000 units, a 1.4-fold increase over a year earlier, while shipments of ordinary TVs stood at 3,934,000 units, down 17.1 percent.
The value of shipments of overall consumer electronics equipment in June fell 1.3 percent from a year earlier to 164.9 billion yen.
The association corrected May data for shipments of liquid-crystal display TVs to 83,000 units, up 89.1 percent. These were originally reported rising 67.7 percent to 74,000 units.
As a result, the value of shipments of overall consumer electronics equipment in May rose to 155.5 billion yen, up 9.7 percent from an initially reported 9 percent increase to 154.5 billion yen.