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T Sharp Electronics Indonesia (SEI), the local arm of Japanese electronic product manufacturer Sharp Corporation, hopes to boost its Smart TV business amid surging demand for the product.

SEI product marketing general manager Herdiana Anita said Smart TVs '€” which are called '€œsmart'€ because they integrate Internet services '€” had become a favorite among higher-income consumers in the country.

'€œWhile the fuel-prices hike [which may lead to higher inflation rates] will probably affect middle-class consumers, the high-income group will still strive for the pride of owning a smart TV,'€ she said Wednesday after the launching of the light-emitting diode (LED) television, Cocoro Eye, and the Android-based smart TV, the company'€™s latest products.

Citing data from market research firm GfK, SEI product planning manager Andrew Gultom told reporters that Smart TV currently made up 6 percent of the total volume of sales of LED TVs, a surge from 5 percent last year.

Non-smart TVs, meanwhile, accounted for 94 percent of the total volume of sales this year, a decline from 95 percent last year.

SEI'€™s Cocoro Eye provides a number of advanced features, such as smart-power control (gesture recognition), assist-light mode and auto-color adjustment. The Android-based Smart TV, meanwhile, offers all the features usually found on Android-based smartphones.

The two TV products will hit stores by end of this month, while additional series of the products will be available in January of next year. The Cocoro will be priced between Rp 7.7 million (US$623) and Rp 48 million, while the Android-based Smart TV will be priced between
Rp 10.1 million to Rp 18 million.

The new products will compete with various brands from major TV producers, including Panasonic, Samsung and Sony.

SEI president director Fumihiro Irie said that with the new products coming in, his company aimed to sell 2,700 smart TV units per month. That would increase Sharp'€™s share of the country'€™s smart TV market to 15 percent, up from the current 10.5 percent, he added.

'€œWe are also upbeat that the sales of both Cocoro and Android-based smart TV'€™s will be good, considering that many families will probably seek new TV sets during the Christmas and New Year holidays,'€ he said.

Herdiana said that while she was upbeat that her firm would see an increase in its smart TV sales, a significant surge in smart TV sales nationwide would very much depend on the country'€™s Internet services.

According to a report from GfK, the Internet-enabled TV (smart TV) accounted for 17 percent of all TV sales in Southeast Asia in May this year '€” up from 12 percent last year '€” with Singapore making up 56 percent of the total number of TV'€™s sold across the region.