Samsung buys 3% stake in Sharp for a whopping $112 Million

Sharp and Samsung have done business together in the past, but after Sharp confirmed that they will receive 10.4 Billion Yen/ $112 Million from Samsung for a 3% in the company, the relationship is about to be reinvigorated. Samsung isn’t the only one who have invested in Sharp, Qualcom committed a $120 Million investment to Sharp, but they’ll need to pay half of it by end of 2012 and other half by the business year ending of March 31.

Japanese company Sharp has been struggling with the commitment to provide both their larger LCD TV panels and small to medium sized panels for mobile and tablet devices for some time now.

While Samsung will still use its supplies of LCD panels for its smartphones via its affiliate Samsung Display Co., WSJ’s blog update predicts that this move would help Sharp to reduce its dependence on Apple and even prevent the possibility of Apple getting exclusive display panels.

To those who don’t know, Sharp has been working on its IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) display panels which will allow much higher pixel density with less power consumption. As this technology can  beused to smartphones, tablets and such portable devices, this is the turnaround opportunity their looking for as they predict that there will be strong demand for such panels. Qualcomm also will be collaborating on IGZO and MEMS’ power-saving development for the screens. Alas, because the Japanese based display maker is still struggling with lesser production, they were reduced to making it available for few smartphones and tablets in Japan only.

Over the past 18 months, the company has tried layoffs, voluntary retirements, reducing pay and even selling their assembly factory in the effort and hopes to jump back into profitability by 2014. However, since its predicted that the company would be facing a record breaking 450 Billion Yen loss, they are taking even more aggressive moves to stay afloat.

Via: Techspot