[Phil Hinton]

Pioneer Corporation and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic products, today reached a basic agreement on a comprehensive PDP business alliance to further progress and reinforce the PDP businesses.

The agreement mainly covers R & D as well as strategic production and supply of PDP and modules. The two companies will discuss further detail and conclude a formal agreement on the PDP business alliance around May 2008.

Pioneer and Matsushita have been serving the market with high-performance, high-quality plasma TVs under their respective brands “KURO” and “VIERA,” exploiting the advantages of the PDP devices as self-emitting displays and their own video technologies. They have won high praise from consumers and audiovisual specialists.


The two companies believe the comprehensive alliance will bring about significant synergy effects by the integration of Pioneer’s KURO technologies, renowned for high luminance efficiency, high contrast and super-slim design, with NeoPDP, Matsushita’s own technologies for high efficiency that has been developed as evolutionary technologies of the next-generation “VIERA” plasma displays. By developing PDPs and modules that are eco-friendly and excel in performance and picture-quality, Pioneer and Matsushita will contribute to further growth of plasma TVs in the flat-panel TV Market.

In collaboration with Pioneer, Matsushita will develop and manufacture PDPs and modules on which their technological strengths are concentrated. Matsushita plans to start supplying these newly-developed PDPs and modules in time for Pioneer’s release of new PDP products which will be available in the autumn of 2009. By promoting the integration of their PDP technologies and sharing the same PDP, Pioneer and Matsushita intend to increase efficiency in panel development and production and boost their cost competitiveness in the flat-panel TV market.

As for the size of panels, the two companies will discuss details in consideration of customer demand, market competitiveness and the size of panels currently marketed by Pioneer.

Pioneer and Matsushita will continue to supply their own plasma TVs to meet growing consumer demand worldwide by taking advantage of their proprietary image processing technologies as well as the fruits of this business alliance.


There will be a more detailed announcement concerning the partnership in May 2008.

[micramda]

When will Pioneer discontinue their current Kuro range? I want to get a 60" in September. Will that be too late?