Sony and Samsung still happy together

IHT: Samsung-Sony joint venture begin shipping 52-inch LCD panels

SEOUL, South Korea: Samsung
Electronics Co. and Sony Corp. on Tuesday began shipping panels for large-sized flat screen televisions from the newest production line at their liquid crystal display joint venture.
The eighth generation line at the venture, called S-LCD Corp., makes panels of 46 inches and 52 inches measured diagonally from corner to corner."Our sights are now on LCD TVs in the 50-inch class and we aim to lead that segment," Chang Won-kie said in a statement. The first panels shipped were 52-inch ones.
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Samsung and Sony founded S-LCD in 2004 to produce panels to meet demand for flat screen televisions, which has soared in recent years as consumers give up bulky cathode-ray tube sets for the sleeker versions.

I'll be upfront and say that I have a personal bias against Samsung. I've never been blown away by their image quality. In addition, way back in the days when Rear-Projection CRT big screens were king, I was soured by an inordinate number of units that crapped out in client's homes one Christmas season. I admit that it's not particularly rational, but that's my bias.

I will be fair and say that Samsung did a fantastic job of promoting DLP technology to the marketplace, and were extremely innovative with it. Overall, Samsung has clawed their way to a premier position amongst electronics companies and they deserve their success, more or less.

It's probably a sign of both Samsung's star being on the zenith, and Sony's on the apogee that the two shacked up together three years ago to collaborate on LCD flat panels. CE today is a complex playing field, where competitors are also collaborators. Fifteen years ago it would have been unthinkable for Sony to partner with a rival brand this way. Of course, it's exactly that kind of thinking that has put them into the pickle that Sony now finds itself in.

With a course set for a slow, stately decline, Sony carries on like a fading empire, only mildly heeding the world around it, still self-consciously believing in its supremacy, but quietly hiring barbarian mercenaries to protect its borders from barbarian invaders.

Okay, maybe I spun that metaphor out a little far, but at the moment, Sony and Samsung combined haven't managed to usurp Sharp's technological primacy in the LCD business. Will they? I don't know. We'll have to see.

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