Last week Japan Display announced a new strategic shift to OLED technologies, as its LCD business is losing money and the company now says that a transformation into an OLED-focused company is its last chance to become profitable.
JDI said it will need to raise new funds to finance this focus shift and overcome its losses. An interesting report from Japan claims that Foxconn is interested in acquiring JDI with an aim to integrate it with Sharp to create a Japanese OLED alliance that will be able to compete with Samsung and LGD.
Towards the end of 2016 JDI received a $650 million USD investment from INCJ to grow its LCD and OLED business. Parts of these funds were used to take over a majority stake in printed OLED developer JOLED. JDI's current plans is to start producing OLEDs by 2019.
Sharp, meanwhile, is also investing heavily in OLED production, and it is also estimated that mass production will not begin by 2019. Korean and Chinese display makers have a large OLED lead over both Sharp and JDI, and Foxconn seems to believe that combining these two companies may enable them to compete in this market.
Exactly one year ago Sharp expressed interest in a collaboration with JDI regarding OLED technologies, but JDI said no discussions are actually taking place. It may be that the losing display maker has no choice now but to find a partner to help it enter the OLED market quicker than previous plans.
