One of the stories which caught my eye recently is the possible merger of Sony and Toshiba's small panel business to create what would be the largest player in that space in the market. 

For Sony and Toshiba, a joint venture would look a reasonable proposition. Both companies have good display technology, especially in polysilicon, and they will each struggle to compete in the long term with the giants of the LCD world if they remain alone.

Also a couple of weeks ago, Sharp said that it was planning to restructure its business by moving more small panel production to larger substrates and reducing its business in the 'commodity' market of TVs of 40" and below. Although a number of commentators remarked on this 'new' strategy for Sharp, to me it seemed to just be a return to the strategy of old. When others were pursuing monitor panels, at the time when G5 and G6 was 'state of the art', Sharp focused on its high value add small panels, exploiting its CGS (LTPS-like) technology, and its large TV panels. At that time, the strategy was known as the 'smile curve' - the profit was at the raised ends, not in the volume middle. It was only with the G8 and G10 fabs, and especially the G10, that Sharp got more into the volume markets and part of this was strongly driven by the success of the firm's TV business in Japan.

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