Taiwanese digital television manufacturers and key component suppliers are expected to establish closer ties with their Chinese counterparts to vie for a slice of the fast-growing market, industry watchers said yesterday.
The establishment of the Taiwan Digital Television Industry Alliance (台灣數位電視產業聯盟), financed partly by the government, is seen as the first step toward such cooperation, Lin Bao-shuh (林寶樹), the chairman of the alliance, told reporters yesterday.
"The alliance aims to facilitate cooperation between Taiwan's digital TV industry and its Chinese counterpart," he said.
The 100-member alliance is scheduled to hold a seminar on digital TV development late next month, which China's second largest home appliances and cellphone maker, TCL Corp, will attend.
In addition, as Beijing hopes to have its own standards developed before it starts nationwide digital broadcasts by 2010, the new alliance said Taiwanese companies have a good chance of working together with Chinese firms in coming up with a standard, he said.
Tatung Co (大同), a household name in Taiwan's home appliances sector, said it wanted to have a say in the joint development of a standard for the fast-growing Chinese market, said Alan Pan (潘泰吉), a general manager of Tatung's multimedia communications division.
"China is a very promising market and we hope to gain a share. Participating in the formation of the standard is the first step," Pan said.
China is expected to ship around 10 million units of digital signal equipment this year, rising to about 20 million units in 2010, according to the China Center of Information Industry Development (CCID, 中國電子信息產業發展研究院).
Tatung, which produces liquid-crystal-display (LCD) TVs and plasma-display-panel (PDP) TVs for Hewlett-Packard Co and Japan's JVC Ltd, is in talks with an unspecified Chinese leading home appliances vendor for a manufacturing contract, Pan said. He declined to detail the talks.
Industry watchers agreed that the populous Chinese market had great potential, although demand had yet to take off.
"The high price tag is the major obstacle," said Ken Ko (
The research agency forecast that global LCD TV shipments this year would more than double from last year to around 10 million units, with most of them going to North America, Western Europe and Japan.
"Demand in the Chinese market will remain flat this year. We see only lukewarm demand for smaller-sized, below 17-inch, LCD TVs there. That's it," Ko said.
Ko said Taiwanese flat-panel makers and digital tuner providers had the best opportunities.
Chen Yen-liang (陳彥良), an analyst at Yuanta Core Pacific Capital Management (元大京華投顧), said: "Chinese companies own good manufacturing, or assembling capabilities, but they have to seek Taiwan's key component makers' supplies."
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