Backed by Japanese Government funding, tech-titans Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi are combining forces to begin work on a range of “medium-sized” LCD displays for use on portable gadgets such as mobile phones and tablets.
Taking the fight to neighbouring rivals, such as LG of South Korea and Samsung of Taiwan, the new super-union will be run under the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), which holds 70% of the shares in the new collective company that is set to start business in 2012.
There are already concerns that this team-up will be a Fail and that LCD will not be in enough demand to warrant such a grandiose strategy. One critic suggesting: “We will probably see oversupply in the near future. It’s not a business that will likely provide stable profits in the mid- to long-term.”
With each company claiming only 10% of the final come-back, it’s hard to see why they’d want to get involved in something so critically slated so early on. And another factor to consider is that Apple will soon be giving Sharp a massive $1-billion hand-out to work on its own screen tech.
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