Korea vs China And The Fallout Is…
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
I blame the Koreans (well okay, I blame Samsung and LG) for getting into a war of attrition in the display business with the Chinese.
Seemingly, never a day goes by, without more bad news from one or other of the display manufacturers (whether they be Korean, Japanese or other).
It’s been widely reported this past week of course that Panasonic is headed for a record USD 10 billion annual loss (ouch, serves ’em right for buying Sanyo I hear you say).
Anyway, we guess the question really is whether this war of attrition is good or bad for the digital signage and DOOH industry?
This year 2012 will definitely see a merciless price war on displays. That’s obviously good for digital signage customers (costs lower of course) but it can also be bad for the ‘industry’ as price wars never do any good for the suppliers.
We’ve set up a quick and dirty twtpoll should you wish to have a Yes / No / Don’t care vote.
It’s probably too early tell which way it may swing but watch this space, for many screen manufacturers it’s going to be horrid out there.
February 8th, 2012 at 14:26 @643
I’m confused: you’ve asked a “good or bad” and given us a “yes or no”. 🙂
I vote bad: my biggest concern is that – for certain manufacturers – the commercial business has been allowed to be almost a loss leader, relying on consumer business to keep up the profitability. Public displays had the logo on them, so it’s almost a form of branding right?
With consumer business approaching a saturation point, the commercial business will have tremendous pressure to not just “ship units”, but to be profitable. Where does profit come from when the HW business operates on such slim margins? SW of course! You’ll see the big guys push their free/freemium solutions more and more, at the expense of the folks that do SW for a living.
My two cents…
February 8th, 2012 at 14:55 @663
Glad you decided not to work for a panel manufacturer Raffi!