Hitachi Moves LCD TV Production Away From Japan

Hitachi and many of the other LCD TV firms in the tech world are having a hard time making the money the segment once turned. The problem is that the purchase of TVs is sagging, and the industry is still recovering in the wake of the price fixing fines that totaled hundreds of millions of dollars. Hitachi has announced today that it will be moving its LCD TV production outside of Japan.

The move is to save money. Previously, Hitachi, Sony, and Toshiba all agreed to an operations merger back in November 2011 that would have all operations for LCD manufacturing merging into the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan. Each of the three firms would hold 10% of the merged company with the deal expected to close this April. The announcement that Hitachi is moving its flat screen LCD TV business out of the country.

Hitachi is moving the flat screen TVs from its consumer electronics arm to the Hitachi brand home appliances arm. That transfer will start April 1 and will be completed by the end of September. That is a strange move since TVs have more to do with consumer electronics than home appliances though the two do converge with some refrigerators having TVs for instance.