Being Optimistic on the Future The Plasma Business of Sichuan Changhong Becomes a Focus2008-02-19
Although the share of TV income of Sichuan Changhong is reducing year by year (from more than 80% to about 50%) and the once TV king might “change”, observers have still focused Changhong’s future on TV business, especially on plasma TV business.
Changhong has produced not only conventional CRT TV, but also LCD and plasma. And changhong has explored to upstream industry actively. At recent years, around “three coordinates”, Changhong has established core technology platform along direction of industrial value chain and transferred to key parts and components.
In plasma, Sichuan Changhong, Century Shuanghong and American MP have invested “Sichuan COC Display Devices Co., Ltd” and founded the first plasma panel production line in China. The total investment for the first stage of COC PDP project will be USD 675 million. And volume production is planned to be started in 2008, being with annual production capacity of 2.16 million pieces of PDP modules.
The project is running smoothly now. After volume production, the domestic household appliance enterprises will get rid of the situation of being enslaved on flat display panel, and the purchase cost of Changhong’s plasma complete TV will be reduced greatly and the gross profit is hopeful to increase massively. In addition with the intrinsic brand and channel advantage of Changhong in plasma market and the large demand on large screen flat panel TV in 2008 Olympic Games, Changhong is likely to achieve explosive increase in plasma complete TV business.
Moreover, Sichuan Changhong declared at the end of last year that it would invest RMB 360 million yuan to found Hongshi Corporation with Chengdu Hi-Tech Investment Group Co., Ltd, developing in OLED (Organic Light Emitting Display) industry.
In the special notice on implementation of new type flat panel display devices industrialization release by National Development and Reform Commission, OLED, TFT-LCD and PDP are listed as the focuses to support. The development of Sichuan Changhong in OLED industry complies with the industrial layout of the government and is likely to win support of policy. However, as a prospective industry, OLED confronts certain risks.
Chinese household appliance industry had only paid attention to current technologies before. When CRT display technology market had still went well, there were no pre-research and technology storage in flat panel display technology, which results in the missing of good chance to enter into market in advance when flat panel display times comes swiftly. In order to make up the shortage of domestic household appliances enterprises in flat display panel, enterprises represented by Changhong and BOE have developed in PDP and LCD rapidly.
The experts therefore thought that Chinese household appliances enterprises should take precautions and store strength for the future. Changhong has explored in OLED when PDP project runs smoothly. This action is propitious to further strength dominant power in industrial chain of new type display technology, enrich storage of core technology, satisfy market demand on different displays and sizes and intensify the core competitive capability of Changhong.
Furthermore, Sichuan Changhong has released the first super large screen high definition digital TV on basis of ground transmission standard in China, becoming the first supplier for whole line digital TV receiver. Changhong Network Corporation has capacity of 6 million of Set-Top Boxes (STB) each year, being one of the largest STB suppliers.
