Recently, flat panel display devices, especially Thin Film Transistor(TFT) - Liquid Crystal Displays(LCD) have become not only strategically important components for the differentiation of many electronic products, but also a promising unit business item which has huge market. Still more, TFT-LCD industry is at a critical juncture now in its industrial history because TFT-LCD's application markets are about to expand to a substitute CRT monitors by so-called LCD Monitor products.
This thesis intends to mainly deal with business performance expectation of major players in this industry under the basis of their process standard competition history.
First, the qualitative aspects of competition history in TFT-LCD industry and business performance differences were investigated with respect to the integration process between manufacturing process standards and product standards, that is dominant designs.
Second, detailed description of interactions among major players, e.g., trends of manufacturing facilities, capacity, manufacturing quantities, yields, and model mix strategies is given by in-depth study of available trade literature.
Finally, under the basic scenario induced from above analysis, which manufacturing capacities of major players will be sluggish for a while, we tried a simple simulation to estimate future business performances of six major players, with some additional assumptions.
The major findings of this simulation are as follows:
-Until the first half of 1999, profitability of all players will be fairly small.
-In the second half of 2000, profitability rankings of six major players will be rearranged to "Samsung, DTI, Sharp, Hitachi, LG, NEC". The main reason of such a result is structural factors like manufacturing line generation that all major players already have and their model mix strategies prevail.
- Judging from mother glass input capacities of major players including what are already committed, from the second half of 2000 at the latest, supply deficit will occur, so timely investment for increasing capacity will be very important to maintain competitive advantage.
