SED TV Reviews

On September 8, Canon Chairman Fujio Mitarai said that Canon and Toshiba plan to begin constructing a mass production line for SED (surface conduction electron emitter display) flat-panel televisions by the end of this year. They had planned to roll out the SED TV this past spring, but delayed its launch until next year because of the rapid decline in prices of LCD and plasma TVs.

In line with their initial plans, the partners plan to invest a total of 180 billion yen to build the production line at Toshiba’s Himeji factory in Hyogo Prefecture.

“We want to be able to mass-market the products in time for the shopping season for the Beijing Olympics in 2008,” Mitarai said. But “we have not yet established the manufacturing technology for mass-producing SEDs at low cost,” he said.

Mitarai regards the next five years as an expansion period, during which Canon will develop new businesses as well as actively pursue mergers and acquisitions in Europe and the U.S.

Currently, the first SED HDTVs sets are expected to appear in the U.S. market towards the end of 2007 — hopefully in time for holiday buyers.

With info from:  www.digitaltvdesignline.com

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