lcd panel venture made in china

BEIJING (Reuters) - A joint venture between Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, known as Foxconn, and Sharp Corpplans to build a 61 billion yuan ($8.8 billion) factory in China to produce liquid-crystal displays (LCDs).

Sakai Display Products Corp’s plant will be a so-called Gen-10.5 facility specializing in large-screen LCDs and will be operational by 2019, the company said at a signing event with local officials in Guangzhou on Friday. It said the plant will have capacity equating to 92 billion yuan a year.

Global LCD output was hit this year by the closure of a Samsungfactory that accounted for 3 percent of the market, as well as factory stoppages in Taiwan after an earthquake in March.

China’s largest LCD panel maker, BOE Technology Group, began construction on its own Gen-10.5 plant in Hefei in December last year, with production scheduled to begin in 2018.

In May Shenzhen China Optoelectronics Technology Co, asubsidiary of TCL Corp, announced that it would begin construction on a 50 billion yuan LCD plant in Shenzhen.

Sakai Display Products Corp’s plans for the Guangzhou plant come as Hon Hai seeks to turn the joint venture into a subsidiary, investing a total of 15.1 billion yuan in the company.

The venture will also sell 436,000 shares for 17.1 billion yuan to an investment co-owned by Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou, giving Hon Hai a 53 percent interest in the business and lowering Sharp’s stake from to 26 percent from 40 percent.

TAIPEI -- An LCD panel venture between Hon Hai Precision Industry and Sharp announced Friday that it will build what is expected to be one of the world"s largest screen factories in partnership with the Chinese city of Guangzhou.

The venture, called Sakai Display, and the Guangzhou government signed a 61 billion yuan ($8.78 billion) investment agreement for the plant, as well as a greater industrial park around it, bringing together advanced technology on screen panels, internet-connected "smart" TVs and other fields.

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.

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BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., or Jingdongfang (Chinese: 京东方科技集团股份有限公司), is a Chinese electronic components producer founded in April 1993. Its core businesses are interface devices, smart IoT systems and smart medicine and engineering integration.LCD, OLEDs and flexible displays.

In April 1993, Beijing Oriental Electronics Group Co., Ltd was founded by Wang Dongsheng. In 1997, it listed B shares on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In 2001, Beijing Oriental Electronics was renamed BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd. BOE acquired SK Hynix"s STN-LCD and OLED businesses for US$22.5 million.flat-panel display businesses for US$380 million.

In 2019, BOE formed a joint venture with Rohinni for MicroLED and mini LED backlighting manufacturing.Hisense announced its U9E TVs featuring dual LCD panels which Hisense said exceeds OLED TVs in brightness, color gamut and color accuracy. Its panels are produced by BOE.Huawei Mate X scheduled for release in Q4 2019 reportly has a foldable OLED from BOE.Samsung Displays.flat-panel display producer.Huawei to research cameras under OLEDs.LG Display and Tianma as OLED supplier for LG Electronics smartphones in 2020.Apple beginning in 2021 for the iPhone.

Last week, Sharp announced that it will expand its alliance with CEC (China Electronics Corp.), the parent company of CEC-Panda, a Chinese TFT LCD panel maker. Sharp sold its Gen 6 line to CEC-Panda back in 2011, and now has decided to play an important role in CEC-Panda’s planned Gen 8 TFT LCD fab in Nanjing. Nanjing CEC-Panda LCD Technology Co., with 17.5 billion RMB ($2.9 billion) in capital, will be a joint venture between CEC Group (92 percent) and Sharp (8 percent), the first joint Chinese-Japanese TFT LCD fab. This follows Samsung and LG Display’s efforts to build Gen 8 fabs in China through joint ventures with TCL and Skyworth, respectively.

When Sharp sold its Gen 6 line to CEC two years ago, there was a condition attached that if CEC decided to invest in a higher-generation fab, Sharp would enter into a joint venture and provide technical assistance.

With smart handheld devices (smartphones and tablet PCs) growing faster than LCD TV, CEC-Panda is planning to shift its business focus from TV to smart handheld device panels, which require high resolution, slim form factor, low color shift, high color saturation and low power consumption. This shift requires high performance technologies and processes, which Sharp can provide.

Sharp is the first to implement oxide TFT (in particular IGZO) technology for handheld devices, in order to achieve low power consumption and high resolution. Sharp may implement IGZO technology in Nanjing, not only to help the joint venture company to ramp up high resolution panels, but also to collect royalties from any IGZO production.

As we have analyzed, by 2015, there will be 8 Gen 8 fabs in China, at which point China will have the most Gen 8 capacity; one of these will be the CEC-Panda/Sharp line. As the LCD TV market matures, some of these fabs will start to produce high-resolution smart handheld device panels.

Taiwanese panel makers might be further marginalized and forced to reshape their strategy toward the China market. Taiwan panel makers are the largest suppliers to China at present, with LCD TV panels supplied by AUO and Innolux, and smartphone and tablet PC panels supplied by HannStar and CPT. However, with Korean and Japanese makers invested in China, Taiwanese panel makers will be the only ones facing import duties. Taiwan panel makers will be forced to make additional panel cost reductions or somehow create a unique offering in China (such as new TV sizes, or large but lower resolution smart handheld panels).

CEC-Panda is not recognized as a leading panel maker due to its limited product mix (monitor panels and 32” in Gen 6) and lagging technology. The company has no experience in high resolution (like 4Kx2K) TV panels or smart device panels. However, with help from Sharp, CEC-Panda may become a competitor for high-end panels.

Foxconn had intended to get closer to Sharp to access to high-resolution and low-power technologies, but has not been able to strike an agreement with Sharp, and the relationship is so far limited to the Sakai Gen 10 joint venture and TV business.

Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (SIICA) and Sharp NEC Display Solutions of America (SNDSA) introduced the PN-HC and PN-HE 4K Ultra-HD LCD professional display series. The large-format monitors complement the existing Sharp lineup of monitors for commercial and professional environments, which launched in February 2022 with the PN-HS and PN-HY displays. Offering “vivid, […]

The two electronics companies on Wednesday said they have signed an agreement to create a Shanghai-based joint venture by June 2003. SVA, the largest electronics group in China, is a holding company with interests in product development, manufacturing and sales of household appliances and LCD displays.

The forthcoming company, which is thus far unnamed, will plan, develop and manufacture thin filament transistor LCD panels and modules for PCs, monitors and displays primarily for the Chinese market. NEC and SVA invested 50 billion yen, or just over $416 million, in the company, with 75 percent coming from SVA and 25 percent from NEC.

A fifth-generation LCD plant--one that can more efficiently manufacture large panels--is scheduled to begin operation in Oct. 2004. It will cost about 85 billion yen, or just over $707 million, to set up the plant, the companies said.

In related news, NEC will create a separate new LCD business, called NEC LCD Technologies, to focus on high-end monitors with wide viewing angle technologies and high-resolution displays. For mass-market products, NEC will count on the new joint venture for product development, production and sales.

Joint ventures have become more popular in the LCD industry as the economy has dipped because setting up plants is expensive and joint ventures help to spread out the financial burden.

Shipments are on the rise though, according to a report Wednesday from Austin, Texas, research firm DisplaySearch. The company"s fourth-quarter report on desktop monitor shipments indicates that worldwide shipments of LCDs rose 54 percent from the same period a year ago, to a record high of 9.9 million units, while average pricing fell 9 percent. In 2002, LCD monitor shipments rose 105 percent, to 32.2 million units, the report said.

SEOUL, Korea (Aug. 30, 2019) – LG Display announced today the opening of its 8.5th generation (2,200mm x 2,500mm) OLED panel production plant in Guangzhou, China, ushering in an era of producing 10 million large-size OLED panels a year.

LG Display’s new Guangzhou OLED panel plant started mass-production from this month and will mainly manufacture large-size high-resolution OLED products including 55-inch, 65-inch and 77-inch panels. The initial monthly capacity will be 60,000 sheets, which will be further expanded to 90,000 sheets by 2021.

The company expects to produce over 10 million OLED panels a year by 2022 when this monthly capacity of 90,000 sheets is combined with the 70,000 sheets currently manufactured at its OLED panel plant in Paju, Korea, as well as an additional 45,000 sheets to be produced at its 10.5th generation (2,940mm x 3,370mm) plant in Paju from 2022.

The new 8.5th generation OLED panel plant is operated by LG Display High-Tech China (LG Display High-Tech China Co., Ltd, LGDCO), a joint venture established between LG Display and Guangzhou Development District (GDD). LG Display holds a 70 percent stake with KRW 2.6 trillion in capital.

“Based on our vast experience and capability in OLED production, LG Display will make every effort to ensure the success of LG Display High-Tech China,” said Dr. Sang Beom Han, CEO and Vice Chairman of LG Display, at the opening ceremony attended by Korean and Chinese officials, top executives from LG group, and representatives from customer and partner companies. He added, “With our dual OLED panel production sites in Korea and China, the company will further accelerate the OLED trend in the global premium TV market by providing large-size OLED panels to the world.”

The new 8.5th generation OLED panel plant is built on 74,000 m² of land -- the equivalent of around 10 football fields. With nine levels above ground, the total floor area amounts to 427,000 m². The total area of the LG Display Guangzhou Cluster, which includes LCD panel and module plants, partner company complexes and additional facilities, amounts to 1.3 million m².

As many companies are not able to mass-produce large-size OLED panels due to technical limitations, LG Display, the pioneer and only manufacturer of large-size OLED panels in the world, plans to further widen the gap with its competitors and strengthen its leading position starting from the operation of its Guangzhou OLED plant. Given that LG Display’s customers, including LG Electronics, Sony, Philips, Hisense, Skyworth, Changhong, and Konka, operate TV production plants in China, the company will further boost its competitiveness by providing technology and products in a timely manner.

In addition, as LG Display has been running an 8.5th generation LCD panel plant in Guangzhou, excellent conditions optimized for 8.5th generation display production have already been established in this region in terms of infrastructure, tariffs, and labor and distribution costs.

The sharp increase in OLED TV demand is driven by a growing number of global TV brands manufacturing OLED TVs. The total number of those brands is now 15 worldwide and will reach 16 in 2020 when the largest TV maker in the U.S., Vizio, joins the trend. Accordingly, LG Display’s large-size OLED panel sales are on a significant and constant rise. The company saw an increase in OLED TV panel sales to 2.9 million units in 2018 and yet another increase to 3.8 million units is anticipated in 2019. LG Display expects its large-size OLED panel business to turn to profitability on an annual basis for the first time this year due to these increasing sales.

In order to meet the rapid growth in demand for OLED panels in the premium TV market, LG Display has decided to implement a two-track OLED production strategy by manufacturing large-size OLED panels in both Korea and China. LG Display’s large-size OLED panel production capacity will further increase once the 10.5th generation OLED panel production line at its P10 plant in Paju, Korea goes into operation in 2022. To this end, the company recently announced an additional investment of KRW 3 trillion into this 10.5th generation OLED production line. Through this increased production capacity, LG Display can improve productivity and profitability via economies of scale, thereby advancing the OLED era.

The latest twist in the ongoing saga of Sharp"s financial woes sees the Japanese firm entering into a joint venture with a state-owned Chinese company to manufacture LCD panels at a site in Nanjing.

The new venture will see Sharp licensing its state-of-the-art IGZO (indium-gallium-zinc oxide) panel technology – to China Electronics Corp in return for a stake of just 8% in the new joint venture. The joint venture will be capitalised at 17.5bn yuan (£1.86bn), with Sharp investing just ¥22bn (£146m) into the deal, taken from the licensing fees it will receive from the venture.

A plant will be built in Nanjing to make both LCD TV panels and IGZO panels for computers, tablets and smartphones. Due to be onstream midway through 2015, the facility will be two-thirds the size of Sharp"s flagship display factory in Japan, Kameyama No 2, and will have an initial capacity of 480,000 46in TV panels, or 7.2m 10in tablet screens, per month.

While co-operations like this are almost inevitable given Sharp"s current plight – it lost well over £1bn on its LCD panel business, the technology for which it is best-known, last year – it"s hard to see this latest announcement as anything more than a desperate roll of the dice for the 100-year-old Japanese company.

Yes, this may be the only way Sharp can stay in the LCD panel business, but it does seem to be all but giving away its most precious asset, the power-saving IGZO technology, around which it"s already signed another deal for the supply of panels to Samsung, once regarded as one of Sharp"s main competitors in this field. The two now have a joint venture making panels in Japan.

Qualcomm originally announced its intention to invest in Sharp last December, the deal concerning joint development of Micro ElectroMechanical System, or MEMs, displays. The technology uses minute mechanical shutters for each pixel, opening and closing to display colours, and promises to offer greater energy-efficiency than existing LCD displays.

It desperately needs to turn around its loss-making LCD TV panel factories and convert them to making more profitable small-device displays as part of its survival strategy, but has now said it will have to review the amount it has available to spend on new technologies.

Hon Hai runs a large LCD TV panel factory in Sakai, Japan, jointly with Sharp – an arrangement that"s expected to continue – , and there are suggestions Sharp may sell its factory in Mexico to Hon Hai, while also offloading its Chinese TV assembly plant to Lenovo.

Neither company is yet confirming the deal, but the language used in each party"s comments suggests the joint venture – thought to have been brokered during Sony boss Sir Howard Stringer"s much publicised meeting with Samsung chairman Lee-Kun-hee in May – is very much on the cards.

It"s thought discussions about the 11th-gen joint venture began in earnest after Stringer"s visit to Korea, when he had a dinner with Lee at the Samsung boss"s home. If, as is expected, it goes ahead, it will give Samsung a major technology lead in the LCD market, being the first to use the new glass.

11th generation glass uses the largest sheets of material to date: at 3mx3.32m, the glass is particularly well suited to the production of larger screen sizes, as more large display panels can be produced from a single sheet with less wastage.

A Sony statement earlier this week said that "Co-production of the 11th generation LCD panel with S-LCD, a joint-venture between Sony and Samsung is under consideration. Details about investment size and production date haven"t been decided yet."

Meanwhile, reports from China say that both LG and Samsung have got the go-ahead from the Chinese government to build new LCD panel plants to make displays for the local market.

LG has partnered with top Chinese LCD manufacturer Skyworth to take a 70% stake in an 8th-generation LCD panel plant to be built in Guangzhou. It"s thought LG"s investment will be in the region of £2.5bn.

Taiwan moved forward with new guidelines on technology investments in China on Wednesday, announcing an easing of rules that could help its chip and LCD panel makers compete in China.

The move by Taiwanese officials follows a similar relaxation of regulations in South Korea. Late last year, two of South Korea"s biggest LCD screen makers said they had finally won government clearance to build advanced LCD factories in China. Taiwanese companies have lobbied for a similar easing of strict technology investment rules for the past several years, without success until now.

The new regulations will allow chip makers and LCD screen makers in Taiwan to invest in advanced factories in China, a potential victory for consumers if the move leads to lower prices for chips and LCD screens.

In LCD panels, new Taiwanese regulations will allow companies to build a total of three factories in China that are either 6th generation or more advanced technologically, but the factory must be at least one generation behind their most advanced factory in Taiwan. LCD technology generations refer to the size of the glass sheets used in the factories. Later generations use larger sheets of mother glass, from which several display panels are then cut. The most advanced LCD factories currently in operation are 10th-generation plants. A Taiwanese company with a 10th-generation factory, for example, would be limited to building a 9th-generation plant in China.

The government also imposed a spending limit of NT$50 billion (US$1.56 billion) per year on all China-bound investments by any LCD maker, meaning companies would have to manage their investments in all kinds of LCD-related factories such as module factories, panel factories and more. Taiwanese companies will also have to match any investment in China with a similar investment in Taiwan, the regulations say.

The Taipei government may have limited the options for Taiwanese companies. South Korea"s Samsung plans to build a 2.6 trillion won (US$2.23 billion) 7.5-generation factory in China, while LG Display said it will form a venture to build an 8th generation LCD plant in China for as much as US$4 billion.

(Yicai Global) April 13 -- Tianma Microelectronics, the world’s largest maker of vehicle displays and instruments, said it will invest CNY33 billion (USD5.2 billion) in an 8.6-generation panel project in the Chinese east coast city of Xiamen.

Xiamen Tianma Microelectronics will set up a joint venture project company with three city government-backed firms, its Shenzhen-based parent company said late yesterday. The new plant will have a monthly processing capacity of 120,000 8.6-gen display panels targeted at the on-board and information technology equipment and industrial display market, it added.

The expanding smart electric vehicle industry will drive the long-term development of the vehicle display market, Tianma Micro pointed out, adding that demand for large-screen and high-resolution display panels in the smart EV sector will also continue to increase.

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.

Tom Hancock at Bloomberg last year wrote a very good pieceHow China’s communist officials became venture capitalists(via the Times of India, so it’s free):Hefei has pioneered a shift in Chinese capitalism over recent years in which local governments are increasingly taking minority stakes in private companies. Since the 1950s, Hefei has been a hub of scientific research, but today its shrewd investments have transformed it from a relative backwater to a bustling metropolis of about 5 million people. In terms of economic growth, what Chinese media call the “Hefei model” appears to work. In the decade to 2020, Hefei was China’s fastest-growing city in terms of gross domestic product.

Hefei made its first winning bet on BOE Technology Group Co., an electronic display maker founded in 1993. When BOE was in trouble after the 2008 financial crisis, the city canceled plans for its first subway line and instead plowed billions of yuan into the company on the condition it would build a local plant. BOE built a state-of-the-art liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen plant, and by 2011 Hefei owned an 18% stake. The city agreed to vote with management on key decisions, according to company filings.

Over the following years, Hefei continued to invest in BOE, helping it build new plants and extracting profits. The company brought tens of thousands of jobs to Hefei and anchors a display-industry manufacturing cluster that makes products worth more than 100 billion yuan annually, including for foreign companies such as Corning Inc. In 2021, BOE overtook South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. as the world’s top manufacturer of LCD screens used in flatscreen TVs, helping end China’s dependence on foreign suppliers.

In addition, through the regular exchange of personnel between government agencies and universities at temporary positions, a number of professional talents have also been trained in business promotion and investment. For example, a cadre from a municipal government agency worked as a project manager for seven years at the Institute of Advanced Technology, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and the cadre’s main task was to help scientific researchers sort out patents and link them with the market. The nature of his work requires him to be proficient in professional knowledge before he can put forward constructive suggestions, such as whether a patent is infringing someone else’s intellectual property rights and the market prospect of a patent. He must be proficient in various policies and negotiation skills before effectively communicating with people in different fields, such as civil servants in different government departments, venture capitalists, and professionals in private enterprises.

Among them, to support start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises, a total of 5.92 billion yuan of venture guidance funds, industry guidance funds, and angel funds were set up, which spurred more than 200 billion yuan of investment from non-governmental capital.

Hefei set up an investment fund of nearly 30 billion yuan dedicated to screens and chips, all directed to the upstream and downstream industrial chains of integrated circuits and flat-panel displays. For the 10.5-Generation production line atBOEalone, 7.945 billion yuan of non-governmental funds were spurred (to co-invest with the fund). More non-governmental capital flow into Hefei as a result of the marketization of state capital.

But unlike common venture capital investment, the purpose of government investment and financing does not aim for high returns; instead, it aims to promote better development of local industries by attracting high-quality industrial projects. Therefore, in the investments ofBOE,Visionox,ChangXin Memory Technologies,O-Film, and others, Hefei’s state capital investment always followed the path of “not seeking a controlling stake, exiting promptly when the industries show positive development and then turning to the next project.”