3 LCD Producers Plead Guilty On Price Fixing

In a plea agreement filed Wednesday, LG Display Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd., all makers of LCD screens, have agreed to co-operate in a U.S. Justice Department antitrust investigation currently underway. Deputy Assistant Attorney-General Thomas O. Barnett said “These price-fixing conspiracies affected millions of American consumers who use computers, cellphones and numerous other household electronics every day,” Each of the manufacturers have agreed to pay fines, the fine for LG (Korea) and it's American subsidiary amounts to $400 million, Chunghwa (Taiwan) will pay $65 million, while Sharp (Japan) has agreed to $120 million. For it's part Sharp said in a statement that “After carefully taking into consideration the applicable laws and regulations, the facts and other factors, Sharp has decided that the best possible course of action would be to conclude the aforementioned agreement,” The big question now is, will the fines affect the cost of new LCD's? ;-)

Globe and Mail story.

Sharper touch screen on the horizon

CBC News is reporting that Sharp has developed, and will mass produce, touch-screen glass that is about half the thickness of today's generation of screens, and because it does not use a film covering it will produce sharper images. The technology embeds an optical sensor in each pixel of the screen, will allow for multiple touch points on a single screen at the same time, and has scanning technology built in. The screen will go into production next year and can be made up to ~30 centimetres in width.