LG Display Mulls China LCD Shift

By newsdoug on August 30, 2011

LG plan signals China display shift Interesting reports coming out of Korea hint that LG Display (Seoul: 034220) may be having second thoughts about building a state-of-the-art LCD plant in China, despite years of lobbying for just such a move, in what could actually be a good development for China’s tech sector. Media are reporting that LG Display, which together with hometown rival Samsung Electronics (Seoul: 005930) and Taiwan’s AU Optronics (Taipei: 2409) received permission to operate cutting edge LCD plants in China early this year, has now put its hard-won approval on hold, believing that global capacity for LCDs may be sufficient and peaking as the technology matures. (English article) I must say that I quite agree with this view, as large LCD screen products could well be headed into a permanent downcycle as rival products based on more power-efficient LED technology gain momentum with larger and larger screens boasting higher resolution hitting the market. The power consumption argument is critical especially for portable devices, as LED-based tablet and notebook computers get significantly more battery life using than LCD-based products. The rise of LEDs could make the looming LCD downturn even more painful with the addition of major new capacity in China being built not only by Samsung and AU, but also a major new plant operated by domestic player TCL (Shenzhen: 000100), which counts Samsung among its investors. If the Korean reports are true, and I suspect they are, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Samsung, AU Optronics, and Taiwan’s Chimei Innolux (Taipei: 3481), which also has China aspirations, make similar adjustments to their China strategy. While China would lose out in the short term as investment dollars for LCD projects are scrapped, it would actually benefit in the longer term by largely skipping the LCD chapter of the video screen story, and instead jumping directly to next-generation LEDs.

Bottom line: LG Display’s potential scrapping of its China LCD plans are an early indicator that China could become a global leader in next-generation LED production.

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