Behind the plasma decline

Plasma (television) can have a large viewing angle, good brightness uniformity, dark field dynamic range, rich image layering, small image tailing time, high dynamic resolution, good color reproduction capability, excellent display quality, etc. ... These advantages have led many TV manufacturers to believe that plasma will always have a place in the fierce flat-panel TV competition market.

"The outsider buys the liquid crystal, the insider buys the plasma", the color TV industry had such rumors. But the development of the market is not always what people want. This has to make plasma TV fans sigh. Zhang Bing, research director of NPDDisplaySearch, told the reporter of “Daily Economic News” that the decline of plasma TVs is the result of “bad money driving out good money” in the panel technology industry, and the market will inevitably continue to decline. However, Changhong Group believes that plasma always has a certain consumer market.

Then, why does the plasma fade out of the panel stage? Does the fixed consumer market exist and when will the plasma TV completely withdraw from the market? In response, the Daily Economic News reporter recently interviewed many people in the industry and tried to uncover the reasons behind the decline of plasma TVs. .

Plasma abandoned by capital

“The failure of plasma is a kind of accidental and a result of capital choices.” A person in the industry who has worked in the plasma industry for many years told the Daily Economic News reporter. "Technically speaking, PDP (plasma) has obvious advantages, but the core problem behind LCD (liquid crystal panel) is not technology, but quality. Because most of the capital flock to LCD, PDP quality will be difficult to achieve a breakthrough."

In its view, the power of capital may be revealed from the development of BOE.

BOE’s predecessor was Beijing Electronic Tube Factory. In April 1993, it established a joint-stock company by means of directional fundraising. The core business was positioned in the display area. In 1997, BOE B was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. BOE A was successfully listed in 2001. It was a rare company listed on the A and B stock markets at the time.

According to public information, since its listing, BOE has continuously issued additional shares for expansion of production capacity. In 2006, for the Beijing 5th generation line, the increase will be 670 million shares. In 2008, for Chengdu, the 4.5 generation line will increase by 4.1 billion shares. In 2009, for the Hefei 6th generation line, it will increase by 5 billion shares. By the end of 2010, it will increase the number of Beijing 8th generation line by 3 billion. share. The third one raised 12 billion yuan, and the fourth raised 9 billion yuan.

"BOE's success is largely the result of capital operations, mainly through targeted private placements." The above-mentioned sources stated that most of BOE's investment in the mode of joint venture with the government, but many local governments did not move billions and billions of dollars. The funds are unwilling to bear the risk, so the issuance of equivalent shares through the issuance of private placements, after a 24-month or 36-month freeze period, the local government’s investment company re-opens the shares through the secondary market, not only Recycling investment can also yield considerable benefits. "This model was later followed by many companies."

According to the statistics, from 2001 to 2011, BOE obtained government subsidies of RMB 1.7 billion and repeatedly avoided the danger of “wearing a hat”. However, its financing-investment-loss-refinancing route has also been criticized by the industry.

BOE’s rapid financing and project launch put pressure on the plasma panels. “In this way, BOE currently has 21 panel production lines in China with a total investment of more than 200 billion yuan, plus Huaxing Optoelectronics, which was launched by TCL in 2009, has invested more than 300 billion yuan in the entire LCD panel, while Changhong has only plasma technology. The 4 billion yuan, how can it compete with it?” said the industry insiders.

In fact, the investment quota is also an important consideration for Changhong to be involved in the plasma panel industry at that time. "To be a liquid crystal 8th generation line needs to invest 20 billion yuan, and to make a plasma only invest 2 billion to 4 billion yuan, this is the lowest threshold, (Changhong to try) regardless of the success of failure, can not completely deny it." Zhang Bing thinks .

Panel industry "bad coins expel good money"

Zhang Bing believes that the decline of plasma TVs is a phenomenon in which the "bad money drives out good money" in the panel technology industry. “Good things may not be able to survive. The home appliance market has confirmed this theory. The best thing is definitely not cheap. The amount sold is very small. The large quantities sold are certainly not the best in quality. This is also a law. "When the plasma market shrinks, Zhang Bing appears to have some regrets.

However, there are also industry insiders that technology closure is an important reason for the plasma panel industry is difficult to continue.

“When the plasma industry has just started, the technology is dominated by several giants. It is relatively closed. The plasma five tigers (Matsushita (7.24, 0.00, 0.00%), Samsung, LG, Hitachi, and Pioneer) are actually not willing to lay out production lines in China. "We don't want to sell technology to China," said home appliance observer Liu Buychen told Daily Economic News.

The closure of plasma giants can also be seen in Changhong’s acquisition of Orion.

When Changhong targeted its acquisition of South Korea's Orion Corp. in 2006 to gain access to its cutting-edge core technologies and patents, the opposition from South Korean media, companies, and society was unprecedentedly strong. Although the Rainbow PDP production line achieved mass production in three years, Changhong’s “classic acquisition case” did not change the overall plasma technology closure.

As a result of technology closure, most companies have come to their own feet and started to develop the LCD industry. This has stimulated a large amount of money each year to expand the production of LCD panel production lines. The problems of LCD TVs in color, reaction speed, etc. solve.