29th October 2004
Hitachi, Toshiba and Matsushita have announced a joint venture agreement to establish a company to manufacture and sell LCD panels for flat panel TVs.
The joint venture, to be called IPS Alpha Technology Ltd, will commence operations on January 1, 2005. IPS Alpha will manufacture LCD panels using Hitachi Displays' world-leading IPS mode system technology. Close collaboration with IPS Alpha is expected to achieve synergies in the production of finished products at Hitachi, Toshiba and Matsushita, allowing them to achieve LCD TVs that are even more competitive in terms of performance and price.
In-Plane-Switching (IPS) mode system is a type of TFT LCD display technology. IPS is distinguished by a wide 170-degree viewing angle, both horizontally and vertically, along with minimal gray-scale inversion and viewing-angle dependency, reproducing lifelike images, which is made possible because the liquid crystal molecules can rotate while remaining parallel to the substrate when a voltage is applied, yielding perfect orientation of the crystals. The advanced super (AS)-IPS mode system for use in televisions, large-screen monitors and other applications achieves an approximate 30% improvement in the aperture ratio over conventional IPS technology. Furthermore, AS-IPS realizes a higher level of brightness and reproduces colours more realistically thanks to high-purity colour filters and other proprietary technologies.
IPS Alpha will be located in Mobara, Chiba Prefecture in Japan. The new company will be involved with the manufacture, design and sales of amorphous TFT LCD panels of 23 inches and larger. Planned production capacity will be equivalent to 2.5 million 32 inch panels per year.
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