30 July 03

Formos Plastic Display Corporation, a member of Taiwan's largest business conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group and maker of plasma-display panels for TV sets has passed all certification requirements and that deliveries to a growing number of customers in Taiwan and elsewhere in the world would start soon, according to a spokesman of the company.

According to him, Taiwan will face a serious shortage of plasma display panels in the second half of this year, because demand would far outpace supply and few newcomers to the sector will begin production during the next time.

To meet anticipated demands, Formosa Plasman has decided to speed up its second stage expansion by investing the approximate equivalent of US$ 434 mill into new production lines, to be completed by 2005 and boosting the monthly capacity to 70,000 panels. This woud make Fformosa Plasma the world's top producer, surpassing Samsung and LG of Koream Fujitsu of Japan, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes of Taiwan.

While previously PDP TVs were only seen in commercial applications, shopping malls, stores and conference rooms, they are now rapidly gaining popularity in the home electronics market as prices decline sharply, FPG president Lee Chih-sun said.

The global demand for PDP TVs is still a trickle when compared with CRT-equipped TV sets, but will grow rapidly in terms of percentage over the next few years and to boom by 2006, mainly because the United States will complete a full switch to digital TV that year.

Formosa Plastic Group's president Lee also said that his group will try to extablish a strategic alliance with one or more home appliance manufacturers in Taiwan, making it better able to compete with competitiors in Japan and South Korea. However, he expects that these rivals to fight back, and their advantages is that they represent large and famous international brands, commanding over well established global sales channels and vertically integrated manufacturing capability. Lee said he would do his best to compensate this by cutting panel prices and integrating with strategic partners. as well as to use his conglomerate's capabilities and resources to develop better and cheaper PDP parts.

Despite high panel prices, industry source estimate that 1.75 million PDP TVs will be sold worldwide this year, up from 650,000 units in 2002. On the Taiwan home market, just 5,000 sets were sold in 2002, expected to rise to 11,000 this year.

Insiders point out that by now four mainstream digital TV platforms have developed: PDP TV, LCD TV, LCOS (liquid crystal on silicone) TV, CRT rear-projection TV, and DLP (digital light processing) rear-projection TV.