Japan's Canon, Toshiba to jointly build flat-screen TVs: report

TOKYO (AFP) Dec 04, 2003
Japanese office equipment and camera maker Canon Inc. will enter the market for flat-panel television displays in a joint venture with consumer electronics giant Toshiba Corp., a report said Thursday.

The 50-50 joint venture to be established next spring will mass produce surface conduction electron emitter display (SED) panels starting in 2005, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said.

The two companies have been jointly developing SED panels, which are considered to be more advanced than liquid crystal displays or plasma panels, the paper said.

The TVs will be slimmer than current flat panels and will cut power consumption by more than half, the paper said.

Annual production is projected at around 400,000 to 500,000 units, the paper said. Canon will initially market the new product overseas, including in the United States, while Toshiba will focus on the Japanese market, it said.

The domestic flat-panel TV market roughly doubled to 234 billion yenbillion dollars) in the year to March 2003 from a year earlier, it said.

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