Cash-Poor Sharp Mortgages Display Factories 111
Sharp is one of the small handful of companies that actually make the LCDs that go into products badged with many other companies' names. Now, itwbennett writes "The company was asked by one of its main banks to put its physical assets, including its Apple screen plant, up as collateral for about $2 billion in emergency loans, according to an IDG News Service report. Sharp expects to lose over $3 billion this fiscal year."
Sharp screens are mediocre IMO. (Score:4, Informative)
When I was checking out TVs, I quickly marked Sharp off my list. IMO their panels have the worse viewing angle washout of any of the panel types and no real compensating high point (Yellow pixels are more gimmick than benefit).
I see lots of talk from Sharp, but I have never seen a Sharp screen I want to buy, so no great loss IMO.
Re:Wha? (Score:2, Informative)
It's possible to make awesome products and have poor business plans. See Sun Microsystems.
Arrgh. What you say is true, but inaccurate.
SUN made great products, but their business plan was poor because there wasn't enough of a market for their awesome products to support a viable firm. (I hope that makes sense. My brain has been poluted by a MBA - the most worthless fucking thing I ever did with my time and money.)
Build a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your door. Not so.
I have a cat that does the samething for less and I can pet it and it's cute and everything.
SUN got it's ass kicked because PCs became just as powerful (or at least just as close) as their machines for much much less.
Re:This is a win for Hollywood at least.... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not a feature, it is a glitch is Sharps Color processing.
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/sharp-lc46le821e-lc40le821e-20100628755.htm [hdtvtest.co.uk]
Unfortunately, we were soon to uncover a much more severe colour error which made our previous fears of oversaturated Yellows look truly trivial.
The first sign that the Sharp LC46LE821E had colour problems that went beyond it’s expanded colour gamut became apparent with test patterns, and later with real-world content. The edges of saturated colours — especially reds — would appear thresholded, having a strange “tizzing” effect. In fact, this anomaly almost looked like a modern-day cousin of the dot crawl we all hated in old-fashioned Composite video systems.
Near the beginning of Chapter 6 on the UK Blu-ray Disc release of “The Hurt Locker”, there is a shot of a off-cyan sky which is covered in a pleasing amount of film grain (this material originates on 16mm film). On the Sharp LC46LE821E, even without using its Colour Management controls (that is, using the company’s recommended “Movie” mode settings), the sky showed visible darker blocks dancing around in it. And in the next shot, what once appeared as one smooth sky was divided into two distinct bands. This is very surprising indeed, because Sharp has publically stated that one of the benefits of their Quattron technology is to provide smoother gradations.
Remembering that there were strange artefacts in areas of highly saturated colour, we pulled out the Blu-ray Disc of “Serenity” and skipped to Chapter 6, which features a vividly coloured, impressively lit neon city scene. Here, the Sharp LC46LE821E made a complete mess of the coloured transitions, and created obvious borders around tones which, on any other TV, would appear smooth and natural. The Sharp LC46LE821E created harsh borders around the actors, and in fact, the effect is akin to a poorly-done “green screen” effect with a fuzzy edge. The effect is best illustrated with pictures:
Re:Anyone else have trouble parsing the title (Score:4, Informative)
The problem isnt the English language (which certainly does have problems), its the journalism tendency to leave out "irrelevant" glue words when crafting a headline.
Problem is, those words are required in english for a reason. The grammattically proper headline would be "A cash-poor Sharp mortgages their display factories", which is much less ambiguous.
Sharp's main issues (Score:5, Informative)
For those that don't know, Sharp recently built their tenth-generation glass substrate and LCD factory in Sakai, Japan [google.com]. This is, bar-none, the most advanced, efficient, and green LCD manufacturing facility in the world. To further lower costs, their main suppliers moved their factories just next door to the Sakai plant.
When Sharp first made this plant, it seemed like Japan would come to dominate the LCD industry, again. Sharp had deals with all the major LCD players to manufacture parts for them to use in their own brands. Notably, SONY was a huge investor in the Sakai facility. The Sakai plant was going to produce the best LCD TV components, and SONY has a long history of using top-of-the-line components in their products.
Sharp has fallen on hard times because of two primary issues:
1. The economy, stupid
2. The inexplicable and dramatic rise of the yen
When Sharp first made the facility, it made it big, and it expected big demand. BOOM! global economic meltdown. That seriously hurt Sharp, but at least they still had their deals with other companies to buy their industry-best components. Well, a consequence of the meltdown, quantitative easing, uncertainty, etc, is that the Japanese yen has skyrocketed in value.
I studied abroad in Japan from 2007-2008. At that time, I got about 121 yen per USD. Now the rate is half that. That means Made in Japan is 50% more expensive in the US (and most everywhere else) than it was, before. This is what is killing Sharp. This is what is killing all Japanese manufacturers. Modern Japan developed as an export economy, and with the yen as strong as it is, it is struggling to export. Many of their industries are diversified; for example, Honda has the ability to manufacture the same Honda Civic in Japan or the US, then ship it to whichever country it wants to sell it in depending on the exchange rates. Sharp has put all its eggs in the Made in Japan basket (not a bad decision at the time; I would certainly prefer a Made in Japan TV for a small premium, and I know others would, too), and now that basket is way too expensive to compete.
Unless the yen weakens, Sharp will fail. If they fail, somebody is going to take over the Sakai factory, because it is just too new, too advanced, and too efficient to let disappear.