Word: flatted
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Sharp got its flat-screen focus from Katsuhiko Machida, the company's president, who for years fretted that his outfit was doomed to be a second-tier player. When he ran Sharp's television business in the 1980s, Machida says, the firm had trouble competing because it didn't manufacture the most important TV component, the cathode-ray tube. Forced to cobble together parts bought from competitors, Sharp was little more than an assembler, cranking out sets that were always a little too expensive and a little too poorly engineered to attract many customers. It was a dispiriting struggle, says...
When Machida became president in 1998, he wasted no time acting on his theory. Sharp, he knew, had long excelled at developing products featuring liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). It released the first mass-market LCD calculator in 1973, developed its first flat-panel LCD TV in 1987 and dabbled in LCD televisions throughout the 1990s. Building on that foundation, Machida moved LCD TVs to the forefront of Sharp's strategy. He spent heavily over three years on the design, manufacture and marketing of a new flagship TV brand dubbed Aquos, and his bet paid off. Launched in January...
...place long-term orders for highly specialized, high-margin goods. Similarly, Sharp has profited richly from being the first company to bring extra-large LCD TVs to market. It rolled out a 45-in. model last year and a 65-in. version last August. While the price of flat-panel TVs overall has tumbled 30% in the past year, Sharp's TV prices have slipped only 3%, not least because margins on those high-end products have not yet been eroded by competition...
...more advanced plant, costing another $1.4 billion, that is scheduled to open in 2006. But Sharp's competitors are also building furiously. In a joint venture, LG Electronics and Royal Philips Electronics are spending $5.1 billion to create the world's largest plant for LCDs. Sony, whose lack of flat-screen capacity has been a huge disadvantage, is teaming with Samsung in a $2 billion LCD venture. Hitachi, Toshiba and Matsushita have similarly joined forces. In the U.S., computer maker Dell is getting into the flat-panel game...
...ultimate rewards for the winners in the global TV wars could be vast, as viewers upgrade their old cathode-ray tube sets to flat panels and as broadcasters gradually shift from analog broadcasting to higher-quality digital. Japan has already begun digital broadcasting, and all broadcasts will be digital by mid-2011. In the U.S., every new TV will be required to come with a digital tuner by July 2007, and in Germany digital broadcasts will commence in time for the 2006 World Cup soccer tournament...