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SCMP Reporter

South Korea-based Samsung Electronics is diversifying its business to supply colour liquid crystal displays (LCDs) to Sony's new range of entry-level PlayStations and the growing market for personal digital assistants and mobile phones.

The new 12.5-centimetre thin-film-transistor (TFT) LCD screens would become a feature of Sony's planned PSOne PlayStations, while the 4.5cm TFT-LCDs would be used in mobile handsets of Samsung and other brands, said a Samsung spokesman, who declined to disclose specific brand names.

According to Samsung, the amorphous silicon TFT-LCD can reproduce 4,096 colours and has a response time - reflecting clarity of moving pictures - of 23 milliseconds.

The spokesman said that was one-third of the response time of a colour super-twisted nematic (STN) screen.

'The faster the response time, the better the quality of the moving pictures,' he said. 'Such features ensure the best resolution in the market today.'

TFT technology is now used in notebook PCs and desktop monitors.

Samsung is the world's largest producer of TFT-LCDs and CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile phones, and is the fourth-largest manufacturer of mobile phones behind Nokia, Motorola and Siemens.

'Samsung's perspective on the market for mobile-phone accessories, including LCDs, is relatively positive,' the spokesman said. 'Although the mobile market is slowing, it maintains healthy profits, compared with other IT industries.'

Samsung said although most colour mobile phones used inexpensive STN displays, TFT-LCDs, organic electro-luminescence displays and other new technologies would dominate the market in time, with multimedia becoming a major feature in third-generation (3G) handsets.

Samsung hopes to sell more than one million small and mid-sized displays this year, and four million next year. Most of these sales would be to the handset market.

Handsets with colour displays made up 12 per cent of Samsung's mobile sales this year.

According to International Data Corp (IDC), a decline in mobile-phone shipments in the first half of this year was experienced by Taiwan (11 per cent), South Korea (4.2) and Australia (2.6 per cent), while Hong Kong's mobile-phone numbers fell for the first time in October.

However, continued growth in developing markets such as China ensured the Asia-Pacific market continued to grow, the research firm said.

Samsung said the world market for mobile phones was 400 million units this year, which would grow to one billion by 2005.

IDC said Asia-Pacific shipments would rise from 104.89 million this year to 174.82 million in 2005, with 5 per cent having 3G functions.



Samsung gears up for wider LCD market