Taiwan snaps at heels of Jap LCD market

Is that sun rising or setting?

By Andrew Thomas • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 15th December 2000 11:02 GMT

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Top Japanese LCD makers are losing out to aggressive Taiwanese competition.

Hitachi and Toshiba, second and third biggest flat panel display makers, are losing market share to Taiwanese suppliers who have nearly doubled production this year, say analysts.

Acer Display Technology and Chunghwa Picture Tubes, are tipped to become the world's fourth and fifth largest suppliers by Q2 2002, says market research company DisplaySearch. The report claims that half of the world's top ten producers will soon be Taiwan-based.

As the threat from Korean display companies has grown, many Japanese companies have relocated production to lower-cost operations in Taiwan in order to compete on price, but the move appears to be backfiring as native Taiwanese companies are now posing a threat of their own.

And by the third quarter of 2002, Japan's market share will have dropped from 49 per cent to under 40 per cent, while Taiwan's share of total production should have climbed to 28 per cent. The top three suppliers are likely to be Samsung and LG Philips from Korea and Japan's Sharp Corporation, says the report. ®

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