Mitsubishi Electric's LCD panel business is completely shut down

• By IDT

Mitsubishi Electric's LCD panel business is completely shut down

Regarding Mitsubishi Electric s LCD business exit from the industry，The Japanese industrial LCD giant has come to an end! Mitsubishi Electric s LCD panel business is completely shut down，The traditional display industry has completely withdrawn

Regarding Mitsubishi Electric's LCD business exit from the industry

The Japanese industrial LCD giant has come to an end! Mitsubishi Electric's LCD panel business is completely shut down

——The traditional display industry has completely withdrawn from competition in East Asia

 1. The end of Mitsubishi's LCD panel business

In June 2020, Mitsubishi Electric officially announced its withdrawal from the LCD panel manufacturing field, and its wholly-owned subsidiary Melco Display Technology (MDTI) will cease production of TFT-LCD modules in June 2022. Since its establishment in 2002, the company has focused on small and medium-sized LCD panels for industrial and automotive use, with a staff of 430 people. After shutdown, the production line will be permanently shut down, the company will enter liquidation procedures, and employees will be transferred to the semiconductor department.

This withdrawal is not an isolated event:

The TV business is shrinking synchronously: In November 2021, Mitsubishi Electric announced that LCD TV products would stop supplying to home appliance retailers and only maintain the exclusive store channel until March 2024, marking a complete exit from the consumer market;

Loss of technological competitiveness: The company's statement bluntly states that it "cannot maintain product competitiveness", especially under the impact of the price war between Chinese and Korean enterprises, the profits of industrial LCD screens continue to deteriorate;

2.The collective collapse of Japan's LCD industry

Mitsubishi's exit is a microcosm of the collapse of Japan's display industry:

In August 2024, Sharp closed its world's first 10th generation line panel factory, Sakai Plant (SDP), ending Japan's last large-scale television panel production. The factory once suffered losses of over 100 billion yen for two consecutive years (115.6 billion yen in 2023), becoming a financial "cancer" for Sharp.

2. When Japanese companies withdraw, Toshiba sold its television business to China Hisense in 2018; Hitachi withdrew from the Japanese television market in 2018; Panasonic will close its global TV production base by 2022. At this point, the production capacity of domestic TV panels in Japan has been reduced to zero, and only small and medium-sized production lines such as the Kameyama factory are retained to maintain demand for automotive and industrial control. 

3．The Rise of China and South Korea and Industrial Changes

The core reason for the collapse of Japanese LCD is the reconstruction of the East Asian industrial chain:

Chinese panel factories have completely squeezed the survival space of Japanese companies through production capacity scale effects (such as the BOE Wuhan 10.5 generation line) and price dominance. After the shutdown of Sharp's Sakai factory, its 42 inch and 60 inch panel orders directly flowed to Chinese manufacturers, accelerating the solidification of the industrial landscape.

4.Technological Transformation and Employee Placement

Mitsubishi Electric's exit strategy highlights its shift in strategic focus:

Resource reallocation: Former LCD business employees have shifted to the automotive power semiconductor department to meet the growing demand of the electric vehicle market;

Military business support: The company's main profit points have shifted towards military and industrial automation equipment, with civilian displays becoming a non core business.

A similar path can also be seen in the transformation of Sharp Sakai factory into an AI data center, achieving light asset operation through technology patent transfer (such as licensing panel technology to Indian companies)

 5、 The end and enlightenment of the Japanese LCD era, 

From monopolizing 90% of the global panel market share in the 1990s to withdrawing from the industry today, reveal the rise and fall of the Japanese LCD industry: "Technology pioneers ≠ market winners" - Sharp pioneered the 10th generation line but fell into a financial black hole due to a privatization decision mistake; "Scale is the right to speak" - Chinese Mainland reshapes the price system with its capacity control ability, and there is no survival gap between waist and tail manufacturers 2. With the rise of emerging panel production capacity in countries such as India and Vietnam, a new round of industrial migration has quietly begun after the end of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" in East Asia. For integrated electronics giants like Mitsubishi, divesting loss making businesses and focusing on high value-added areas may be the only survival rule in global competition.

Mitsubishi Electric's LCD business exit timeline

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