By Patrick Avenell

SYDNEY, NSW: The man that has masterminded Samsung’s virtual monopoly on 3D TV sales has paid special tribute to his retail partners, saying that without their input, the TVs would never have been so well received by the Australian consumer.

Talking to Current.com.au shortly after revealing an 89 per cent value market share, group product manager, AV, Evan Manolis said Samsung’s retail partners, combined with being first to market, were the two biggest influencers of this outcome.

“Since I’ve been here, we’ve always been first to market with technology and product,” said Manolis, a 4-year veteran of Samsung. “LED is what we started last year and we were first to market, I think that really laid the [groundwork] for new innovation and new technology and we spent a lot of time educating why LED is different.”

“We were first to market with LED, first to market with 3D, first to market with 3D home theatre, first to market with 3D Blu-ray: that whole 3D story.”

Being first to market is obviously an advantage, but having strong partnerships in storeland is just as important. Manolis graciously acknowledged their help.

“The planning goes back one year. We’ve already started talking to our retailers about 2011, the range and their buy in. What do they think? The designs? What else can we add? What features? What’s happening in the market? Trends? What are your customers asking for? What’s the demographic? Those kind of marketing insights from our retailers last year and the year before is very important to us.”

“[We have] partnerships with the likes of Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys: big retailers all driving that [3D] message.”

UPDATE: Current.com.au wants to make clear that GfK did not release this information, and that only Samsung provided this information. The 89 per cent value share is based on cumulative sales from the release of the first 3D TVs in Australia.