Sony Corp and Panasonic Corp, Japan’s biggest makers of televisions, agreed to jointly develop sets using organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays as they seek to rebound from a combined ¥1.2 trillion (US$15 billion) in losses last year.
The companies aim to establish mass-production technology for OLED panels next year, they said in a statement yesterday, without setting target dates for introducing OLED sets.
The partnership is the first between the main TV operations at the two companies, which are losing money as the strengthened yen erodes overseas earnings and as competition from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics Inc intensifies. The two South Korean companies have said they will introduce OLED models by Dec. 31.
OLED televisions are as thin as 4mm and produce sharper images than current liquid-crystal-display (LCD) models. Shipments of OLED TVs may grow to 2.1 million sets in 2015 from 34,000 this year, according to Colorado-based IHS Inc’s iSuppli.
Using organically glowing materials, OLED TVs do not require separate backlights and can be half as thick as an Apple iPad 2, which measures 8.8mm. The technology, already used in mobile devices including Sony’s PlayStation Vita players and Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, uses less power than LCDs and has a higher contrast rate, creating more vivid images.
Sony posted a record ¥457 billion net loss for the year ended March 31 as its TV business was unprofitable for an eighth straight year.
The unit will probably lose about ¥80 billion this fiscal year as Sony predicted sales would decline 11 percent to 17.5 million sets, the company said last month.
Hirai plans to make the TV unit profitable in the year ending March 2014.
Panasonic will probably stop losing money from TVs in the quarter starting Jan. 1, chief financial officer Makoto Uenoyama said last month.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day