Tag: display

Sharp Display will remain independent

keep-calm-and-stay-sharp-5Sharp has given up on an idea which would see it merging its troubled display business with rival Japan Display.

Apparently the company has a technological advantage over its competitors so it makes sense to keep going.

Norikazu Hohshi, the head of Sharp’s device business ,told reporters at a briefing that looking at its  overall display business he believed it should be on its own.

Sharp is due to post its third annual net loss in four years, hurt by aggressive competition from its rival and weaker-than-expected Chinese smartphone demand.

That is not to say that Sharp has not got a cunning plan to pull its nadgers out of the fire. Apparently executives are compiling a new business plan and considering investing in new nadger pulling equipment.

Chief Executive Kozo Takahashi met with officials from its main lenders Mizuho Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ last Thursday, although he did not request specific amounts or make promises about restructuring.

The difficulty is that Sharp is really short of cash and may need help.

The banks agreed in September 2012 to rescue Sharp with loans and credit lines worth 360 billion yen, or $3 billion at today’s exchange rates, in exchange for promises to return to the black by this year.

Sharp then exited the European TV market and closed solar-panel businesses in Europe and the United States. However things do not appear to have become any better,

Samsung squeezes its suppliers

samsung-hqIn a bid to cut prices and keep pace with its competitors it appears Korean giant Samsung is putting pressure on its suppliers to cut their prices.

Digitimes reports that Samsung wants some component suppliers for its display business to slash their prices, in some cases by as much as 30 percent during this quarter.

The display business not only services the creation of monitors and TVs made by Samsung, but also, and in this case more crucially, displays on smartphones.

Samsung has seen its market share on tablets and smartphones show something of a decline in 2014 and wants to reverse that trend.

The same report said that Samsung is also slashing prices on its OLED displays in a bid to attract more customers to the technology.  Expensive to develop, OLED needs volumes to sell in order to achieve payback for the R&D.

Lenovo and Dell are both likely customers for OLED displays – a significant design win for Samsung if the report proves to be true.