Rumors about this have been circulating for quite some time, and finally Sharp has officially announced the closure of the non-profit Sakai Display Products TV panel factory and the sale of some other businesses, including smartphone camera parts and display semiconductors.
The company launched the factory in Sakai, Osaka, in 2009, spending $2.7 billion on its construction, which was the main reason for net losses over the next two fiscal years. According to a Sharp representative, the production of displays at the plant will be completed by September this year, and the company will stop producing smaller panels at other factories.
In the future, according to Yang Liu, chairman of Foxconn (which has owned Sharp since 2016), the Sakai factory will be transformed into an AI data center. It is not yet known whether the company will continue to produce TVs with other people’s panels, whether it will license the Sharp brand to other TV manufacturers, or whether the brand will cease to exist in the TV market.
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