The consolidation process in the TV business continues and now even becomes international. Just last month, Sharp inked a “historical” joint venture deal with former rival Sony, agreeing to supply LED backlights to Sony for their LCD TVs (which happened this month).

And now Japan’s biggest business publication, the Nikkei, has learned that Sharp now plans to deliver LCD TV panels to Dutch electronics giant Philips. Starting as early as next year, the panels will be shipped from Sharp’s plant in Sakai, Osaka, to Philips factories in South America and Poland.

The Sakai plant began operating just in October this year. Sharp’s factory in Poland will first turn the panels into semi-finished products and then deliver them to Philips’ plant in the same country. In South America, Sharp panels will be shipped to Philips factories in Brazil.

According to the Nikkei, Sharp aims at optimizing use of their new plant through the cooperation, while Philips tries to cut production costs for their TVs and wants to reach break even in that segment next year.

Research company Display Search says Sharp is currently the world’s fifth biggest LCD maker, while Philips is the number six.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Globally speaking, there is one clear leader in the LCD TV business: Samsung. The company commands a 23.2% share in this segment, with Sony (13.7%) and Sharp (7%) almost hopelessly behind (according to DisplaySearch). So in June this year already, Sony and Sharp inked a joint venture deal to produce LCD TVs together. And today, the Nikkei (Japan’s biggest business publication), reports that the two former arch rivals decided to further expand their alliance.

The newspaper says Sharp plans to deliver LED backlights to Sony for their LCD TVs as early as next month. Sharp has said it will start producing more LED-based products earlier this year, but the Sony deal is the first time another company is supplied with LED backlights. Backlights account for nearly 20% of overall costs in manufacturing an LCD TV. DisplaySearch projects that by 2013, roughly 40% of all LCD TVs on the market will have LED backlights.

Sharp and Sony will also join forces in R&D for next-generation backlights, the Nikkei learned. The goals are to cut costs and develop TVs with better picture quality and efficient power consumption. Both companies already started operating a Sharp LCD panel production plant in Osaka last month and suffer from losses in their LCD TV divisions.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Japan’s biggest business publication, the Nikkei, is reporting that Panasonic is thinking about using lithium ion batterries used in notebooks to power electric cars. Obviously, the big idea is to bring down the overall costs of these vehicles (and make some money for the company, too).

Panasonic aims at replacing the dozens of lithium ion batteries usually required to power an electric car with thousands of cylindrical batteries originally designed for notebooks, resulting in positive cost effects.

In concrete terms, Panasonic wants to push down costs the power systems for (mid-size) electric cars as a whole from the current average of $33,000 to $11,000. The company isn’t first to try this: Tesla’s Roadster from March 2008 also uses batteries originally designed for home electronics.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Neither one of the companies involved have confirmed this officially so far, but the Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business publication is usually very reliable: According to that source, Hitachi and Toshiba are joining forces to take the leadership in the field of next-generation HDDs that have 10 times the memory capacity of models today.

Both companies are pretty big players in the HDD market: Hitachi is the world’s third biggest maker, while Toshiba is No. 4. The new HDDs are supposed to be ready by 2012. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry throws in $48 million in financial support for the project.

Nanotechnology will be used to boost recording density, leading to smaller HDDs for the end consumer and energy consumption cuts of more than 20% for data centers. In the end, recording density should be as high as 5 terabits (5 trillion bits) per square inch, ten times more than now.

An earlier version with five times the memory capacity of existing models is planned to be ready by the end of fiscal 2010 (March 2011 under the usual Japanese definition).

Via Nikkei [JP]

(Credit: The Onion)

This just in: things are so miserable in the news business that you can’t even turn a buck in the fake news business.

The Onion, a print publication that satirizes the news, is for sale, according to a story that appeared Wednesday in Gawker.

Citing an …

The Nikkei, a major Japanese business publication, is reporting that NEC is planning to sell RFID tag readers/writers, which are priced less than 10% compared to existing products. The company seems to have made major advancements “in the field of semiconductor research”, resulting in the drastic price cut.

The tags are compatible with all of the six worldwide radio communications standards. NEC is ready to accept orders beginning as early as this July. 10,000 of the new tags will be available for approximately $100.

NEC is expecting to rake in $1 billion in sales by 2014 by not only selling the tags but by also leasing compatible software and servers to buyers. The company seems to be willing to expand the scope of usage of RFID tags from the industrial field to the retail sector in order to achieve mass adoption.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]