Philips who are struggling to survive in the brutal flat panel TV market have now said that they are set to quit the plasma TV market altogether. It was only a few weeks ago that Philips cut a deal to quit the US TV market.

Already out of the plasma arket in Australia Philips say that they are is likely to completely get out of the PDP TV market in 2009 according to DigiTimes in Taiwan. In 2007, Philips started to lower its PDP TV shipments and quit operations in China's PDP TV market.

Although annual growth in demand for PDP TVs is still increasing; compared to that of LCD TVs, around 100 million units this year for example, PDP TV's demand of around 13 million units is considerably smaller.

Funai, the vendor who operates the Philips TV brand, has told its partners that neither it nor Philips have plans to develop new PDP TVs from the end of 2008, indicating that Philips will officially quit PDP TV operations in 2009.

However, although Philips is planning to quit the market, its PDP TV shipments are still expected to reach around 500,000 units this year.