“Sharp is allocating a large chunk of its LCD production to Apple — but it isn’t terribly sanguine about the prospect, a company executive said on Monday,” Brooke Crothers reports for CNET.
“The entire output of the Japanese display maker’s Kameyama No. 1 plant ‘goes to just one company (Apple),’ according to an interview with Sharp Senior Executive Managing Officer Norikazu Hoshi published by Japanese newspaper Nikkei on Monday,” Crothers reports. “Hoshi, however, does not portray that plant’s operations as financially sound. ‘If you look at just this plant, it certainly presents a high level of volatility risk. But if we make LCD panels for smartphones in large quantities at the No. 2 plant, we can absorb the impact even when the No. 1 plant is not doing so well,’ he said to Nikkei.”
“In short, having Apple as a customer leads to dramatic swings in production from quarter to quarter,” Crothers reports. “Sharp will invest about 35 billion yen ($340 million, £202 million, AU$366 million) in the LCD business in the current fiscal year. Much of that is going to IGZO panels — the same kind of panel used in the iPad Mini Retina — Hoshi said.”
Read more in the full article here.
Good. I’ve used a lot of Sharp products when I lived in Japan. And who doesn’t like an Osaka based company? ごめんね。。。東京。
Yeah my new TV is a Sharp. I skip Samsung like a plague. 🙂
Me too. Sharp Aquos 60″ for the bedroom. Great set.
I bough a TV for my mother — it was is also Sharp. I avoided Samsung for ethic reasons, but the TV set I bought was actually the best for parameters I sought anyway.
What an fool. They could not be making them at all and letting Samdung or someone else continue closing down their factories.
That makes perfect sense. Are you a Rhodes Scholar?
The volatility ranges all the way from “good” to “absolutely fantastic”. What a terrible problem.
Excellent – less business for spamshun – the world best photocopier company.