Encouraged by the growth, TCL said it had revised its sales target for LCD sets to 10.2 million for this year, from the earlier full-year target of 9.6 million. The company had initially set a target of 8.5 million, before revising it to 9.6 million.

The television maker said it would pay more attention to R&D and sales of light-emitting diode (LED) televisions, expected to be the next big trend. TCL sold 2.7 million LED sets in the first nine months. Although that was just about 38 per cent of all LCD televisions sold, it was a 700 per cent jump year-on-year.

Revenue at TCL jumped 18 per cent year on year, to HK$22.5 billion, and net profit for the nine months amounted to HK$391 million.

Meanwhile, phone maker TCL Communication Technology, a sister concern, reported its revenue rose 33 per cent to HK$7.46 billion and net profit jumped 34 per cent to HK$606 million in the first nine months.

The company sold 30.5 million phones worldwide during the period, 28 per cent more than in the same period last year.

Chief executive George Guo said TCL Communication would make more efforts to explore the smartphone market. 'The most important thing for us will not be the amount of phones that we sell but the profit margin,' Guo added.

The company announced this year's mobile-phone sales target had been lowered to 44 million units, from 50 million, because of a sluggish global economy.

Smartphones made up 4.4 per cent of the company's output in the third quarter, a big jump from the 0.3 per cent in the first. The company said the number was bound to increase but did not elaborate. It will launch 20 new phone models in the fourth quarter, of which seven will be smartphones.

TCL Communication also said it would strengthen its presence on the mainland, where demand is growing rapidly. In the past nine months, it sold three million phones there, a rise of 71 per cent year on year.