Your Guide To LCD Television

In recent news of new LCD televisions lineup launch by Sharp, they claimed they are number One LCD televisions brand in Japan. Is this true? I searched for more supportive information to counter check whether Sharp is as “sharp” as they claimed.

Hiroshi Take, one of the managers of Sharp Corp.’s latest and most advanced television factory, beams like a proud father. The gleaming white $1.4 billion Kameyama factory, 260 miles southwest of Tokyo, came online in year 2004 and is cranking out thousands of Sharp’s hot-selling large-screen flat-panel Aquos TVs per month.

Sharp got its flat-screen focus from Katsuhiko Machida, the company’s president, who for years fretted that his outfit was doomed to be a second-tier player. When he ran Sharp’s television business in the 1980s, Machida says, the firm had trouble competing because it didn’t manufacture the most important TV component, the cathode-ray tube. Forced to cobble together parts bought from competitors, Sharp was little more than an assembler, cranking out sets that were always a little too expensive and a little too poorly engineered to attract many customers. It was a dispiriting struggle, says Machida, but it taught him an ironclad belief that is now axiomatic throughout the company: “If you are in electronics and you are not strong in TVs, your business and your brand will suffer.”

When Machida became president in 1998, he wasted no time acting on his theory. Sharp, he knew, had long excelled at developing products featuring liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). It released the first mass-market LCD calculator in 1973, developed its first flat-panel LCD TV in 1987 and dabbled in LCD televisions throughout the 1990s. Building on that foundation, Machida moved LCD TVs to the forefront of Sharp’s strategy. He spent heavily over three years on the design, manufacture and marketing of a new flagship TV brand dubbed Aquos, and his bet paid off. Launched in January 2001–a moment referred to inside the company as the Big Bang–Aquos quickly became the coolest name in TVs since the Sony Trinitron. Sharp is now the world’s biggest seller of LCD televisions, accounting for 1 in 4 of all LCD sets sold.

Sharp AQUOS LCD Televisions

Wow, from the bold statement above, I can say that Sharp captured more than 25% of LCD televisions market share worldwide. Anyway, right now, Sharp is the only company that produce own LCD panel, LCD TV and has it own intellectual property on LCD technology that remain solo in LCD televisions fierce war.

Even in his core business of manufacturing LCDs, Machida is playing to Sharp’s strengths and avoiding margin-killing commodity products. Taking on Goliaths like LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics across every LCD product line would be foolish, he says. They’re dominant, for example, in mass-market LCD panels used in smaller, cheaper TVs and in laptops. Rather than engage them in a murderous price war, Sharp concentrates almost exclusively on ever larger TVs or on small, high-quality panels found in cell phones, car navigation systems and handheld game players like Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS. That tactic has enabled Sharp to withstand the margin pressure that’s ravaging its rivals.

Right next door to the Kameyama plant that opened last year, Sharp is building a larger, more advanced plant, costing another $1.4 billion, that is scheduled to open in 2006. But Sharp’s competitors are also building furiously. In a joint venture, LG Electronics and Royal Philips Electronics are spending $5.1 billion to create the world’s largest plant for LCDs. Sony, whose lack of flat-screen capacity has been a huge disadvantage, is teaming with Samsung in a $2 billion LCD venture. Hitachi, Toshiba and Matsushita have similarly joined forces. In the U.S., computer maker Dell is getting into the flat-panel game. However, Sharp is happy to go it alone, hoping that it’s strong enough technologically to maintain a leadership position without a partner.

Sharp Kameyama LCD Televisions Plant

Source of article above from Time’s Sharp’s New Focus (www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1106322-1,00.html)

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