lcd panel venture quotation

2 Min ReadAn employee of LG Electronics" home appliances store walks past its LCD televisions displayed for customers at a store in Seoul July 21, 2008. REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea"s LG Display Co Ltdand Taiwan"s Amtran Technologyagreed on Monday to set up a joint venture in China to produce flat screen modules and manufacture TV sets for brand makers.

LG Display, the world’s second-biggest maker of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, has sought alliances with Asian TV makers to strengthen its client base and reduce costs.

The LG-Amtran joint venture will be set up in Amtran’s existing production base in Suzhou, China, with initial funding of $20 million. LG Display will own 51 percent of the new company and Amtran, maker of Vizio brand LCD TVs, will hold the remaining 49 percent.

The joint venture will produce 3 million LCD modules and 5 million LCD TV sets a year, with operations set to start early next year, LG said. It did not disclose the value of any additional investments to be made.

Leading LCD makers, including No. 1 Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, LG Display and third-ranked AU Optronics Corpface a slowing global economy that has hit demand for new flat-screen TVs and personal computers.

TOKYO/SEOUL (Reuters) - Sony Corp has agreed to sell its nearly 50 percent stake in an LCD joint venture with Samsung Electronics to the South Korean company for $940 million, as it struggles to reduce huge losses at its TV business.

The seven-year-old venture cut its capital by 15 percent in July and industry sources had said Sony was negotiating an exit, aiming to switch to cheaper outsourcing for flat screens for its TVs while Samsung pushes ahead with next-generation displays.

In November, Sony, the world’s third largest flat panel TV maker, warned of a fourth straight year of net losses for the financial year to next March, with its TV unit alone set to lose $2.2 billion on tumbling demand and a surging yen.

Some analysts say the $100 billion LCD TV market peaked last year and forecast it will shrink 3 to 4 percent annually, as consumers in advanced countries have already traded in their bulky cathode-ray tube TV sets for flat screens, while the LCD market has been in a glut since last summer.

In November, Sony cut its TV unit sales forecast for the second time this year and dropped a plan to boost its TV sales to 40 million sets a year in the fiscal year ending March 2013, effectively conceding defeat to Samsung, the world’s largest flat-panel TV maker.

Sony said in April it would not raise its stake in a separate LCD venture with Sharp Corp for at least a year, and in August said it would merge its loss-making small-panel business with the government-backed Japan Display.

In October, it signaled a stepped-up push into the smartphone market by announcing it would take control of its mobile phone joint venture with Ericsson for $1.5 billion.

TOKYO -- Sony Corp. and Sharp Corp. will form a joint venture to make liquid-crystal-display panels for television sets at a new Sharp plant as both sides seek to solidify their positions in an increasingly competitive market.

Under the agreement, Sharp will share ownership with Sony of LCD facilities Sharp is building in western Japan. Sharp will hold a 66% stake in the joint venture, with Sony taking the rest. The companies didn"t disclose the amount of Sony"s investment. But Sharp has said the total cost of the LCD factory would be about $3.5 billion, which would value Sony"s stake at about $1 billion.

Liquid crystal display (LCD) is a flat panel display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals. Liquid crystals do not produce light directly, instead using a backlight or reflector to produce images in colour or monochrome.

TOKYO, Oct 29, 2004 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- Hitachi Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Toshiba Corp. said Friday they have officially signed an accord to set up a joint venture to manufacture liquid crystal display panels for flat TVs in January.

Fumiaki Yonai, president of Hitachi Displays Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, will concurrently serve as president of the joint venture, the three companies said.

Demand for such panels has been increasingly backed by the popularity of flat TVs featuring high picture quality, large screens and space-saving profiles.

SEOUL (AFX-ASIA) - S-LCD Corp, a joint venture between Samsung Electronics and Sony Corp, has completed construction of what it claims to be the world"s largest generation 7, amorphous TFT-LCD panel production plant.

The facility will use advanced manufacturing equipment for 7th generation LCD panels and will produce 60,000 panels a month, the two companies said in a joint statement.

The joint venture, capitalized at 2.1 trln won, is owned "50 pct plus one share" by Samsung and "50 pct minus one share" by Sony. Samsung and Sony will have four seats each on the eight-member board of directors.

"The cooperation between and Samsung and Sony offers an opportunity to lead the rapidly growing LCD TV market and standardization of glass substrate and LCD TV sizes," president and CEO of Samsung Electronics LCD business SW Lee said.

Sony Corp"s executive deputy president and COO Ken Kutaragi said television is a key product for Sony and S-LCD"s panels will be at the core of the company"s flat panel TV strategy.

Sharp will own 66% of the joint venture, with Sony holding the remaining stake. It will produce LCD panels and modules for use in large-scale TVs and will supply both Sharp and Sony.

The flat-panel TV market has been growing rapidly in recent years, but Japanese manufacturers are under pressure from rivals in South Korea and Taiwan who are pumping out cheaper, lower-end products. This has triggered a wave of new alliances as they adjust strategies to better position themselves against competitors.

There are reports that Sony is increasing its LCD panel purchases from LG Display. Sony stopped their partnership with Samsung (Samsung bought Sony"s stake in the LCD joint venture). An LGD official is quoted saying that future talks will also cover OLED TV panel outsourcing.

LG Display is currently gearing up to start producing 55" OLED TV panels. Their 8.5-Gen pilot line will produce around 48,000 monthly panels - which probably won"t be enough to outsource to Sony. But LGD already decided to increase their OLED TV panel capacity (by building a new fab or perhaps converting an LCD line). This will take at least a year and half.

Sony is no longer making consumer OLED TV, but the company is still developing and producing large OLED panels used in professional broadcasting monitors. It seems that the company has made the same mistake it made with LCD displays and will have to rely on outsourcing for its OLED panels. It"s a shame as the company used to be at the forefront of OLED TV research back in 2007.

LG"s first OLED TV will be the 55EM9600 - a 55" Full-HD OLED TV featuring 100,000,000:1 contrast ratio and fast response time (1,000 times faster than LCD according to LG). The panel is only 4mm thick, and the whole TV weighs just 7.5Kg. The TV is based on LG Display"s Oxide-TFT white-OLED with color filters (RGBW) OLED panel.

TOKYO -- Sony Corp. is talking with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and other parties on the possibility of a liquid crystal display (LCD) manufacturing joint venture, the company said Monday.

But it denied a report in the Monday edition of South Korea"s Joong Ang Ilbo newspaper that the two companies have already agreed to form a venture and are now discussing the final details.

"We announced (earlier this year) that there is a shift from outsourcing LCD panel supply to making an investment in panel production, either on our own or in an alliance with another company," said Gerald Cavanagh, a spokesman for Sony in Tokyo. "Samsung is included in the parties we are talking to along with other parties however nothing has been decided and nothing along the lines of the newspaper report."

In its report, the Joong Ang Ilbo quoted "industry sources" as saying Sony is likely to invest in Samsung"s LCD operations and take over responsibility for marketing and finance while Samsung concentrates on production and management. Investment from Sony will be used to help finance an LCD fabrication facility currently under construction in Chungcheong province, south of Seoul. The plan will see total investment of 20 trillion won ($17.5 billion) by 2010, said the newspaper.

Samsung is one of the world"s largest suppliers of TFT (thin film transistor) LCD panels, which is the type of panel used in most advanced electronics products that feature flat screen displays, such as notebook computers, cellular telephones and televisions.

In the first quarter of this year the company had a 17.2 percent market share when measured by total display area, according to market research company Display Search Inc. The market leader was LG Philips LCD Co. Ltd., which had a share of 20.3 percent and is a joint venture between LG Electronics Inc. and Royal Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands. The remainder of the top five had Taiwan"s AU Optronics Corp. in third place with a 12.3 percent share, Taiwan"s Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. in fourth place with an 11.6 percent share and Japan"s Sharp Corp. in fifth place with 7.5 percent of the market in the quarter.

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Japan"s Sony and South Korean rival Samsung are dissolving their joint venture in liquid crystal display panels as Sony tries to stanch years of losses in its TV business.

Samsung Electronics Co. will buy all of Sony"s shares in the joint venture for about $935 million subject to a final agreement, Sony Corp. said Monday.

The joint venture called S-LCD was set up in 2004. Sony, which fell behind in flat panel TVs, invested in a Samsung panel factory to ensure a steady supply of panels for its LCD TVs. Sony"s TV operation has lost money for seven straight years and the company is straining to return that key business to profit.

The prices of TVs as well as panels have been dropping so it makes more sense to buy panels at the market rate than to invest in production. Sony, which makes Bravia TV sets, does not make its own LCD panels.