Funai inks pact with CMO to secure TV-panel supply

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on February 27, 2006. It reports that Japan's Funai Electric Co. Ltd. recently signed a cooperation agreement with Taiwan's Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. to secure stable supply of LCD panels. Chi Mei is Taiwan's No. 2 TFT-LCD panel maker and the No. 1 supplier of LCD TV panels.

Funai markets its consumer-electronics products globally under the brands of Emerson, Sylvania and Symphonic. The company was originally a major cathode-ray tube (CRT) TV brand and has turned to aggressively develop LCD TV business in recent years. In 2006, Funai plans to launch a series of new products that boast the world's highest picture-quality by utilizing its latest production technology of LCD modules and the new image-processing technology. The company is providing US$400 million to Chi Mei in order to solidify relations between the two groups.

Meanwhile, Chi Mei also signed a patent cross-licesing agreement with Japan's Sharp, the world's largest LCD TV brand. The company is expected to begin supplying under-30-inch TV panels to Sharp soon. This is just one more example of how Chi Mei has developed closed cooperation relationships with big international LCD TV brands, as the company was the earliest among Taiwan's panel-making companies to develop and produce TV panels.