Japanese display manufacturers lower estimates
03/01/1998
Japanese display manufacturers lower estimates
Sluggish sales of personal computers in the Japanese market have resulted in lower-than-expected sales of flat-panel displays for computer applications, and as a result, leading FPD producers have been forced to cut their sales estimates.
Virtually all of the leading Japanese display makers are backing away from predictions made at the beginning of the fiscal year in April and May, when the top ten manufacturers were expecting an overall year-to-year sales rise of 41.3%. Even if there are poorer sales, this fiscal year should see solid growth, with some smaller producers nearly doubling sales.
One bright area has been the low-temperature polysilicon display sector. Toshiba has indicated that it will accelerate investment in the technology, bringing its fiscal year spending up to 30 billion yen ($227 million) from the originally expected 20 billion yen level. Sanyo has not lowered its sales forecast because it emphasizes the low-temperature displays. Sanyo and Sony have a joint development deal on the displays, and much of Sanyo`s output goes to Sony for use in digital still and video cameras and consumer electronics - markets that have not shown as much of a dropoff as PCs.
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Anticipating the hardest hit is leading supplier Sharp, which is scaling back its expectations for the fiscal year by nearly 20%. Original plans called for revenues of 340 billion yen ($2.6 billion); now the firm expects to sell 275 billion yen ($2.1 billion) worth of displays.
Giant NEC is reducing sales plans by about 13%, to 130 billion yen ($994 million) from the original estimate of 150 billion ($1.1 billion). Even at the lower level, this still represents a 30% hike over the previous fiscal year. Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Fujitsu are also pessimistic about revenues, though the anticipated declines are less than at larger suppliers (see table). - WaferNews