epson lcd panel made in china

TOKYO, Nov 15 Asia Pulse - Sanyo Epson Imaging Devices Corp., a joint venture between Sanyo Electric Co. (TSE:6764) and Seiko Epson Corp. (TSE:6724), will move part of its production of color LCD panels from Nagano Prefecture to Suzhou, China , company sources said.

Most of the displays made in Suzhou will be STN (super twist nematic) panels for use in cell phones sold overseas. Integrated production will be carried out in China to enhance efficiency.

It’s quite a distance from deciding your company has no future in manufacturing LCD projectors to be becoming the global market leader, but it’s a distance Epson has travelled in the space of two decades, as I"ve been discovering on a visit to the company"s massive production facility here in China.

Epson brought its first LCD projector, the VPJ-700, to market in January 1989 – and at the time, its 320x220-pixel resolution more than justified a cost of almost $6000. It was July 1991’s VPJ-2000 that almost ruined the company’s faith in the technology’s saleability, though – here was a projector with a resolution of 480x440px, weighing almost 11 kilos and costing the thick end of $11,000 (more than twice the price the company had originally targeted).

Sales were disastrous: around 10% of what Epson had (conservatively, it thought) predicted. The VPJ-2000 fiasco saw Epson’s development of LCD projectors pretty much abandoned – the entire department was reduced to just six men.

It sold like gangbusters, and five years later Epson was the global market leader in business and domestic projectors – a position it’s yet to relinquish. It’s a market that’s grown by at least 10% every year since 2004.

The company has consolidated its position thanks to a lot of targeted investment, not least of which is Epson Engineering (Shenzhen) Limited. ESL is the largest projector manufacturing plant in the world, with over 5000 staff involved in the production of business and domestic projectors.

Epson Japan is responsible for design and development, but ESL handles all aspects of manufacture and assembly – every component of every Epson projector (and there’s quite a range) is built at ESL.

Epson is the only manufacturer in the world to develop and construct both the LCD panels and the lamps its projectors use, and ESL (which started production in 2002) is responsible for some of the more prodigious production figures you’re ever likely to read.

The bulk of the products are for the commercial market – there isn’t an office or a school the world over that doesn’t have need of a projector at some point – but Epson is determined to expand consumer demand for its products.

Flat-panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED (organic light emitting diode) and microLED displays are not quite the same; since LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allowing it to pass through the panel, whereas OLED/microLED displays consist of electroluminescent organic/inorganic materials that generate light when a current is passed through the material. LCD, OLED and microLED displays are driven using LTPS, IGZO, LTPO, and A-Si TFT transistor technologies as their backplane using ITO to supply current to the transistors and in turn to the liquid crystal or electroluminescent material. Segment and passive OLED and LCD displays do not use a backplane but use indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent conductive material, to pass current to the electroluminescent material or liquid crystal. In LCDs, there is an even layer of liquid crystal throughout the panel whereas an OLED display has the electroluminescent material only where it is meant to light up. OLEDs, LCDs and microLEDs can be made flexible and transparent, but LCDs require a backlight because they cannot emit light on their own like OLEDs and microLEDs.

Liquid-crystal display (or LCD) is a thin, flat panel used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. They are usually made of glass but they can also be made out of plastic. Some manufacturers make transparent LCD panels and special sequential color segment LCDs that have higher than usual refresh rates and an RGB backlight. The backlight is synchronized with the display so that the colors will show up as needed. The list of LCD manufacturers:

Organic light emitting diode (or OLED displays) is a thin, flat panel made of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. OLED panels can also take the shape of a light panel, where red, green and blue light emitting materials are stacked to create a white light panel. OLED displays can also be made transparent and/or flexible and these transparent panels are available on the market and are widely used in smartphones with under-display optical fingerprint sensors. LCD and OLED displays are available in different shapes, the most prominent of which is a circular display, which is used in smartwatches. The list of OLED display manufacturers:

MicroLED displays is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Like OLED, microLED offers infinite contrast ratio, but unlike OLED, microLED is immune to screen burn-in, and consumes less power while having higher light output, as it uses LEDs instead of organic electroluminescent materials, The list of MicroLED display manufacturers:

LCDs are made in a glass substrate. For OLED, the substrate can also be plastic. The size of the substrates are specified in generations, with each generation using a larger substrate. For example, a 4th generation substrate is larger in size than a 3rd generation substrate. A larger substrate allows for more panels to be cut from a single substrate, or for larger panels to be made, akin to increasing wafer sizes in the semiconductor industry.

"Samsung Display has halted local Gen-8 LCD lines: sources". THE ELEC, Korea Electronics Industry Media. August 16, 2019. Archived from the original on April 3, 2020. Retrieved December 18, 2019.

"TCL to Build World"s Largest Gen 11 LCD Panel Factory". www.businesswire.com. May 19, 2016. Archived from the original on April 2, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2018.

"Panel Manufacturers Start to Operate Their New 8th Generation LCD Lines". 대한민국 IT포털의 중심! 이티뉴스. June 19, 2017. Archived from the original on June 30, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2019.

"TCL"s Panel Manufacturer CSOT Commences Production of High Generation Panel Modules". www.businesswire.com. June 14, 2018. Archived from the original on June 30, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2019.

"Samsung Display Considering Halting Some LCD Production Lines". 비즈니스코리아 - BusinessKorea. August 16, 2019. Archived from the original on April 5, 2020. Retrieved December 19, 2019.

Herald, The Korea (July 6, 2016). "Samsung Display accelerates transition from LCD to OLED". www.koreaherald.com. Archived from the original on April 1, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2018.

"China"s BOE to have world"s largest TFT-LCD+AMOLED capacity in 2019". ihsmarkit.com. 2017-03-22. Archived from the original on 2019-08-16. Retrieved 2019-08-17.