Japan’s Hitachi Ltd. said on Friday it planned to set up a flat panel television plant in Europe that will begin operations by January 2007, the latest in a wave of expansion steps by Asian electronics makers.

It would be Hitachi’s first flat TV assembly plant in Europe.

Hitachi’s currently ranks fifth in the PDP market and lagged behind in the LCD TV market during the first three quarters of 2005, according to market researchers DisplaySearch. Hitachi’s TV business is one of its major loss-makers along with TVs, display panels and storage drives.

Hitachi’s lastest plan to expand plasma panel output capacity to 300,000 units is much smaller in scale than those of rival flat panel makers such as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., raising concerns that it might not boost the company’s competitiveness significantly.

Ebata said Hitachi is considering launching a plasma TV model with about a 60-inch panel size in the next business year starting April 1. The company currently offers 55-inch plasma TVs as its largest model.

Struggling Hitachi Ltd. has announced a bullish flat TV strategy that aims to grab 30 percent of the global HD PDP TV market by 2007.

A new European plant would be one of Hitachi’s largest flat TV assembly base besides plants in Japan, the United States and China. The new plant will have a monthly capacity of about 120,000 units by 2007. All four plants would assemble both PDP and LCD TVs using panels supplied from Japan.

Hitachi expects shipments to the North American market will grow to 840,000 units in 2008, accounting for 24 percent of the total HD PDP market. Hitachi is forecasting that demand for HD-type PDP TVs will grow by 70 percent by 2008. Hence, the company is concentrating on HD panels.

But Hitachi’s strategy must wait for operations to start at Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display Ltd.’s (FHP) new PDP fab along with a new LCD joint venture, IPS Alpha Technology Ltd. Both are scheduled to begin operations in 2006. The new PDP fab, FHP’s third, will initially begin operations with a monthly capacity of 100,000 units. At that point, Hitachi’s total PDP capacity will double to 200,000 units.

IPS Alpha, a joint manufacturing company founded with Matsushita and Toshiba, will begin production in the third quarter of 2006 with an annual capacity of 2.5 million units.

Source: EE Times - Hitachi seeks to boost flat TV business