Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Sharp makes huge investment in liquid-crystal TV

Sharp plans to invest $2.4bn, next year to maintain its top spot in the liquid crystal display TV market. It seems most of the money will be spent on boosting production at its booming liquid crystal display factory, which is simply unable to keep up with surging demand for LCDs, used in flat-panel TVs, cell phones and laptops.

And Sharp expects to sell 50% more liquid crystal TV's in the next fiscal year to a total of 6M. The current total market for liquid crystal TV's stands at about 20M and is way ahead of the plasma TV market which sells about 5M units per year.

Sharp's investment should see them be able to quadruple output. Sharp clearly believes that liquid crystal TV will ultimately win out over plasma and scale to larger and larger TV sets.

Matsushita has also announced a massive new investment in liquid crystal production. It looks like the two Japanese manufacturers intend to dominate the market. It's all good news for consumers as prices are bound to keep coming down.

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