Air conditioners

Before the whole overview of the air-conditioner brands which are offered on the Bulgarian market I would like to define more precisely that I consider the retail market, i.e. air-conditioners used in homes and small offices. The sales of air-conditioners on this market usually involve deals selling from one to ten air-conditioners from the so-called split system, i.e. one outer body and one which is installed in the room. Some restaurants use the same air-conditioners for air-conditioning but this is rather an exception because another class of installations is designed to function in such conditions. The air-conditioner market, not only in Bulgaria, can be divided into four separate segments::

Companies for air conditioners Air-conditioners - Sofia Service- Plovdiv Air- conditioners - Burgas Air-conditioners - Plovdiv

Air-conditioner market

• Conventional air conditioners for home usage

The lowest segment with the lowest prices from the air-conditioners market in Bulgaria is called this way although there are other names all over the world. Such air conditioners are used on the most unpretentious occasions for cooling small rooms, or, rather, separate rooms in a house or a flat. This technology was used all over the world on a mass scale until the beginning of the 1980s and at the moment it is still used in order to satisfy the searching for the lowest price air conditioners without any other claims. The company producing the MIDEA air conditioners is number one in this segment on the air conditioner market. Despite their leader's position MIDEA are not the only producers of simple low price air-conditioners. There is a huge competition in this segment mostly among the producers in China, where, according to the tradition, the brand is not important and it is not possible to describe these brands.

• Inverter air conditioners for home usage

Most inverter air conditioners use the technology from the above mentioned two higher classes and are used in homes and small offices. On a world scale DAIKIN ( with registered seat in the Japanese city Osaka, which has nothing in common with the Bulgarian brand for air-conditioners Osaka), are holding the biggest share of the sales and have a leading position in this segment with the constant innovations in the manufactured by the company air-conditioners, competing with MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRY, MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC, PANASONIC, TOSHIBA, TOYOTOMI, i.e. all Japanese brands forming to a certain extent the elite in this segment. There is further information about the Japanese brands of air-conditioners below.

• Air-conditioners with middle power

This type of air conditioners is used in little public buildings, restaurants or fairly big office premises. The leader in this segment from the air-conditioner market in the world most probably is LG Electronics with quite big sales in the last years. This statement comes from the LG Electronics themselves and has to be verified although the company is serious enough and will hardly confirm something which is not true, not to mention that their competitors will oppose them immediately.

• Air-conditioners with high power

These air conditioners are used for the biggest buildings, hypermarkets, commercial centres or the more modern word � Malls, and such quite big and mainly public buildings. Usually they are part of the ventilation of the building. I am not very clear sighted about this market in Bulgaria, but on a global scale Carrier seem to be the biggest which turns this company into the leader in the world when it comes to turnover because one such air-conditioner costs more than one million euros, which equals about 2000 air conditioners for home usage.

The following information concerns the market of home inverter and simple air conditioners according to their prices.

On the Bulgarian market you can find dozens of air conditioner brands starting from the world famous MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRY, MISTUBISHI ELECTRIC, DAIKIN, TOSHIBA, LG and all sorts of other less interesting brands like, for example, the Japanese brand TOYOTOMI. According to their quality and prices, these brands can be classified into three major groups.

High quality - respectively high prices

The first group consists of the Japanese brands of air conditioners: DAIKIN, MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRY, TOYOTOMI, MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC, FUJITSU GENERAL, HITACHI, PANASONIC, TOSHIBA, McQuay and to some extent CARRIER. In fact, CARRIER is an American brand but in 1999 they made a "joint venture" with TOSHIBA (Toshiba Carrier Corporation) In a joint company and in a world of "globalization"it becomes a little difficult to differentiate the things. The situation with McQuay is similar. McQuay is a company from the United States of America, which, in the year 1994, was bought by the Malaysian O.Y.L. Industries Bhd. In the year 2006 O.Y.L. is the fourth in the world in terms of production of commercial air conditioners*. The same year Daikin Industries, Ltd. bought O.Y.L O.Y.L. The original text aiming at entering this market segment.

Anyhow, the Japanese brands are of the highest quality, they are some of the most reliable brands, and, of course, have he highest prices. Part of their high price is compensated for the high extent of energy efficiency during the exploitation - most models from this group have COP about 5. Japan is the country with the biggest market for air conditioners - there is no other country annually consuming more air conditioners and may be this strong home market allows them to be the leaders in the field � of course we do not have to forget that a big part of the high technologies start from Japan. The lack of their own energy dissipators and cheap labour are the other two factors making the Japanese produce the most effective and reliable air conditioners� and yet the electricity and labour during the repair work are very expensive there. Most of the air-conditioners from this group are produced in Malaysia because of two reasons.

1. Japan does not have natural resources: energy dissipators and raw materials, which imposes import and it leads to their high price in Japan. This high price leads to a very significant rise in the prices of the manufactured products ( in our case ( air conditioners).
2. 1.Lack of cheap and unskilled workers due to the high standard and high erudition of the population.

All things considered, because of these reasons from the year 1990 until nowadays nothing but "know how" has been exported from Japan, and a significant part of the manufacture is exported to Malaysia. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, these factories were built by the Japanese, all the engineers working there are Japanese and only cheap resources are being used.

The high price air-conditioners produced in Japan and designed for the Japanese market rarely appear in Bulgaria. One of the few such air conditioners is DAISEIKAI, the TOSHIBA series from the joint company with CARRIER. We have to bear in mind that the power supply in Japan is 110V/60Hz and the Japanese air-conditioners sold in Bulgaria are produced for the European market despite the small difference. This difference is not a big technical problem because every second-year student at the Technical University can easily remodel the power supply circuit, especially of the inverter air-conditioners. It is beside the point whether such actions are acceptable from the point of view of security and reliability. In fact, the change of the initial circuit decision of the manufacturer is not advisable for all kinds of domestic equipment � this equipment is going to be used by people without technical literacy which can be dangerous for their health and life. Precisely because of these reasons it is good to avoid buying air-conditioners via the internet because they are intended either for the Japanese or for the American market. After all, the Japanese manufacturers have considered the Bulgarian market too and there are many of their representatives in Bulgaria where you can buy Japanese air conditioners of high quality at the same prices if your aim is to get the best quality.

Middle group prices

The middle group includes Korean brands for air-conditioners LG and SAMSUNG, the American GENERAL ELECTRIC and the Chinese HAIER although they have models which, according to their price and reliability, can be added to the above group. From the point of view of reliability they give way to the air-conditioners from the first group, but their price is far more affordable. On the other side, the Koreans obviously make up for the lower reliability with higher requirements to the service maintenance. In fact, these companies as a whole aim at constant monitoring of what is happening with their already sold products, and care for their clients. In this respect both companies have concluded contracts with Bulgarian service networks. LG Electronics even has contracts with some rival service networks- Royal Electronics Service and Bulgaria Service or air-conditioners, black and white equipment ( "lack equipment" is a widespread slang in the manufacture fields and those concerned with distribution and service of Televisions, DVD players, in the past video players, audio systems, etc. due to the colour of their boxes. In fact the English speakers use the phrase "Brown goods". By analogy "white equipment" ncludes washing machines, fridges, microwaves, etc. again because of their appearance which is mainly white.) For the rest of the products of LG Electronics (mobile phones, computer monitors, etc..) the situation is similar, and each of their partners has to register every client even for an ordinary consultation and to send an immediate report about this directly to Korea - via internet. In fact, this practice of the two Korean companies is valid not only in Bulgaria, but all over the world.

HAIER is the second biggest producer of white equipment and air conditioners in the world. In Bulgaria apart from their air conditioners other HAIER products rarely appear which might be due to mistakes in the marketing of the brand during the last one or two years or due to another unknown reason. The author has no information about the marketing agency servicing the brand, but recently I get the impression that there are great efforts to change its market behaviour in Bulgaria and to eliminate the mistakes which have been made. This is normal for such a big company. Moreover, in Bulgaria HAIER is distributed by another serious Bulgarian company - Technopolis chain of markets.

Low price

This group includes most of the air conditioners manufactured in China or Turkey: MIDEA, ELITE, BEKO, SANG, NIPPON, HYUNDAI, GREE, NEO, OSAKA and many others which appear every day. HAIER and MIDEA are world famous brands with sales all over the world although they are oriented towards the lower segment of the market, and both companies produce many other products. The advantage of these air-conditioners is the very low price in comparison with all other parameters.

BEKO is a brand not only for air-conditioners but for a lot of other home equipment produced in Turkey. The Turkish factories are huge, may be the biggest factories in Europe for electrical household appliances and they sell their production in the whole Europe because they use customs incentives since they are located in Europe (of course part of Turkey is situated in Europe in the geographical sense but this is not such a big obstacle for tax concessions). This is one of the reasons for the lower prices of these air-conditioners compared to others produced in other continents.

ELITE, SANG, OSAKA, ARTCOOL and many other similar brands of air-conditioners most probably are Bulgarian with quite attractive commercial names. Their products are manufactured in factories in China which makes their prices extremely low. Most of these brands use a popular name, for example ARTCOOL, which can easily be mistaken with the world famous series of LG air conditioners.

Conclusion from the overview of air-conditioner brands

The Japanese manufacturers of air-conditioners DAIKIN, TOSHIBA, MITSUBISHI, etc..), as well as their brands, are the leaders nowadays due to the huge home market in Japan. This market is well-developed, but recently the Asian markets have been growing rapidly. This pace of development leads to records in the produced air conditioners in Asia and the sales in Asia. On the other side, there are many contracts concluded for cooperation between the Japanese producers in order to keep their market positions not only in the production of air conditioners. On the other side, some producers move production and factories in Asia, again aiming at keeping the market shares.

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* The phrase "commercial air conditioners" is literally translated from English because I could not find the Bulgarian equivalent. These air-conditioners are used in public buildings, restaurants, fairly big offices with many separate premises. LLG Electronics is number one in this field followed by Carrier Corporation.