Samsung Buys Sony's Stake In LCD Joint Venture 38
First time accepted submitter rtoz writes "Samsung Electronics has decided to buy out Sony's entire stake in their Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) joint venture. S-LCD Samsung will pay Sony 1.08 trillion won ($939m; £600m) in cash for Sony's entire stake (50% – 1 shares) in S-LCD Corp., a venture formed in 2004 to make TV panels. After acquisition, Samsung Electronics' stake in S-LCD will be 100%. The move comes as Sony has been restructuring its TV business, which has been making a loss for the past seven years."
ONE WHAT (Score:1)
wholly mollllly thats a lot a kraft dinner.....
How did Apple miss out on this (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely, this business would have made business sense for Apple. How did they miss out?
On the other hand, I blame SONY for the woes they are facing in today's electronics market.
Nickel and dimming customers together with hardware that would not work properly with non Sony peripherals robbed them of all potential customers, myself included. Sony thought they were everywhere all the time. Watch out Samsung because I also see Sony traits in you.
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Surely, this business would have made business sense for Apple. How did they miss out?
On the other hand, I blame SONY for the woes they are facing in today's electronics market.
Nickel and dimming customers together with hardware that would not work properly with non Sony peripherals robbed them of all potential customers, myself included. Sony thought they were everywhere all the time. Watch out Samsung because I also see Sony traits in you.
how did they miss out?
SINCE WHEN DO YOU FUCKING THINK APPLE WANTS FACTORIES??!?!?!?!!?!??!
-sincerely, some guy on the coach. but it's true. apple doesn't want factories. or such.
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from what I could find out, anobit designs flash systems and has a big bunch of patents.
for example one of their products uses consumer grade flash chips... so figure it out. it certainly doesn't look like they're actually producing things - you know, real material things, buying copper and rocks and turning them into something.
"Anobit's products are used by world leading flash manufacturers, consumer electronics vendors and storage system providers.".
nowhere are they saying that they'd have a chip fab of t
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Samsung and Apple aren't exactly on good terms at the moment, and if Apple had bought Sony out they would have to play nicely with Samsung.
FWIW, I like Samsung TVs, I have one.
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You know, if I thought Apple had perfected either holographic projection technology, à la R2D2, or some sort of HUD display on sunglasses, I'd actually believe your sarcasm was the honest truth. Especially the holographic part: if it sounds like something off Buck Rogers, it belongs on a Steve Jobs product.
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Funny, "corporate" today sounds dirty, and I am not even a lefty.
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Apple isn't a manufacturing company. They are a design and trademark company. Their prize employees are artists and lawyers, with the engineers bearing the sometimes unreasonable design demands.
LCD manufacturing is a completely different beast. There is no design, there is only R&D and production. Make the display thinner, better contrast, better colour gamut, better viewing angle .... etc, and then manufacture it to the size the customer requires it.
In the business world you stick to what you know best
So what determines quality? (Score:3, Interesting)
Forgive my ignorance, but I've never followed the LCD and/or HDTV market closely, so these may be silly questions with obvious answers. I will assume (correct me if I am wrong) that there's some consolidation in the LCD TV industry and that most "manufacturers" get their panels from only a handful of sources. If that is in fact the case, what variables actually go into determining the quality of a unit? For example, I've read several "rumors" that Samsung once upon a time had a ton of bad caps on some model(s) that gave consumers a lot of grief. Just curious, so thanks for the insight!
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2) You talk to someone who had a manufacturer make a product for them. You tell them your price point and they rebrand some stock for you.
3) You are a manufacturer and you've decided to make a product of your own. You decide on a price point and hope your product is accepted over everyone else.
With the above information you can help your
Foxconn Labor + Samsung Patent = Sony Odd Man Out (Score:5, Interesting)
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It also means Sony's giving up on competing with "Apple TV", while Samsung's gearing up to rip off Apple yet again.
Interesting how the "big picture" has unfolded (Score:5, Informative)
This news, coupled with the fact that Samsung controls 95% of the rapidly accelerating AMOLED panel market, puts them in a dominant position for display panels in general.
For years Samsung played the "ant" by investing heavily into new production plants for AMOLED when the technology was uncertain. While LG, AUO and Sony acted as the "grasshopper", flip-flopping in their commitment to future investment (documented on oled-info.com back to 2006).
Now AMOLED is in a huge number of phones and actual production TVs will be appearing at the upcoming CES (with OLED lighting in a couple years). So Samsung can retrofit the dying, low-margin LCD business by integrating hybrid OLED backlit modules. That will provide competition to LG's upcoming "fake" OLED TV (OLED backlit only), while Samsung's "true" OLED TV (actual OLED pixels) business will have little competition when they release it.
Lastly, not only did Samsung have the foresight to invest billions in capex for the replacement technology, they also locked up a multi year (non-exclusive) contract with the fundamental IP and materials provider for PHOLED (Universal Display Corp). LG and AUO are still twiddling their thumbs with 3-6 month contracts with UDC. This extends to the general lighting market too, as PHOLED will be required because of efficiency.
Is it a good thing for one company too become so powerful in a single segment? Never. But when the competition is weak and near-sighted, this is inevitable outcome. Jmho.
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So Samsung can retrofit the dying, low-margin LCD business
This has to be the main driver. I finally picked up an HDTV for the family for Christmas. I previously had a 27" CRT that I just couldn't get parts for any longer. I've long kept an eye on the LCD and plasma sets, but the picture never looked good enough to me to replace the CRT quality until a year or two ago.
I went to the warehouse club and compared TV's from $200 to $2500. There was large variation between brands (Samsung and Vizio had the nic
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"Oh, and thank-you capitalism for a nice $400 TV"
or a 200$ computer monitor with headphone speakers built in
your welcome
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or a 200$ computer monitor with headphone speakers built in
Oh, gosh, I probably spend a similar inflation-adjusted $2500 for a 17" Trinitron monitor.
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This extends to the general lighting market too, as PHOLED will be required because of efficiency.
I wonder if PHOLED efficiency will result in a longevity advantage too, if the wasted energy in OLEDs contributes to its degradation?
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From my layman's understanding, yes, but how much of a real world effect it is vs. a polymer based device, I don't know. In general though, the three factors related to drive current+lifetime that come to mind are 1) good emitter outcoupling, 2) the fact that OLED is dimmable and 3) OLED is color tunable.
The internal quantum efficiency (IQE) for PHOLED is always going to be 100% as opposed to (much less) for fluorescent OLED. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) factors in outcoupling. So the more light
Trillion? (Score:2, Informative)
Either the exchange rate between British pounds and US dollars has gone up a couple orders of magnitude overnight or someone needs to double check what name is used for 1000 x 1 million. Two 9 figure numbers don't add up to a 13 figure number, ever. Editors, where were you on that one?
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Sony TV business a loss? (Score:3)
Good!
My dad was a Sony only guy from the early 70s onwards. Until I was old enough for him to take my tech advice seriously and Sony earned my contempt more than a decade ago.
So now my dad buys the best non-Sony entertainment units (TV, blu ray, receiver, etc.) he can find (I basically choose his devices for him), and I do the same. And I encourage my friends similarly.
And on the media side of things, I do buy DVDs... But I donate them all to the local libraries as soon as I feel I'm not going to watch them anymore.
I know I'm not making much of a difference, but it's about all I can do.
Are you doing your part?
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Flip that coin one more time. If Sony Was somehow godstruck and began acting like a responsible consumer driven company, would you still ever support them? It seems silly to have a decade old grudge over a company who's executives are most likely working for their competitors now. Now I don't know for sure if Sony's really wised up over their retarded past mistakes, but I find it silly that people get so emotional over a nebulous blob of an entity with so many working parts, anything could jade one. Custome
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Are you aware of any mirrorless camera, available now or in the near future, that can give the coming Sony NEX-7 [imaging-resource.com] a run for its money?
I see nothing on the horizon.
The world is changing fast (Score:1)
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Asians, an inferior race? Holy crap have you ever looked at their women [blogspot.com]?
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Holy crap have you ever looked at their women?
Every chance I get. ;)
Interesting times (Score:1)
So they sell their hard drive business to seagate and buy out Sony tv.
Curious.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/04/19/139259/samsung-hd-unit-bought-by-seagate [slashdot.org]