Philips buys stake in LG LCD

The joint Philips-LG venture, which will, for the moment, retain its name of LG LCD, is expected to officially start business in August and will focus on developing a greater variety of sized LCD panels for the desktop, notebook and embedded markets.

Philips claimed that that the AMLCD flat panel display market had revenues of approximately $8bn in 1998, and expects it to grow annually by more than 20 percent. LG's existing share of this market amounts to sales of around $500m with the company estimating that this will rise to $1.8bn this year.

In a prepared statement, Cor Boonstra, president and CEO of Royal Philips Electronics, hinted that Philips and LG will in the future have a "true" joint venture, where both companies will completely combine their LCD operations.