Panasonic is planning to stop production at two of its TV factories in Japan; one LCD-TV plant and one plasma-TV plant. Panasonic also lowers their TV sales forecast but will continue to produce TVs.

Panasonic stops production at 2 TV plants
Panasonic is experiencing lower-than-expected sales of TVs and are losing money on their TV division. Therefore they plan to close two TV factories in Japan.


Panasonic plans to close the Amagasaki plasma plant to the left

One of the factories is currently producing plasma TV panels and the other one is producing LCD-TV panels. In the coming years Panasonic plans to increase LCD capacity for small-to-medium size LCD panels and decrease LCD-TV panel capacity. Instead Panasonic plans to source LCD-TV panels from outside suppliers, instead of building their own.

Like most TV manufacturers, Panasonic is experiencing lower demand for TVs than forecasted. Therefore Panasonic has lowered their TV sales forecast from 25 million TVs to 19 million for this financial year, as Panasonic sees 5.5 billion USD in annual losses. 

At IFA 2011 Panasonic told us that we can expect larger LCD/LED models in the 2012 line-up but it seems that Panasonic plans to use another manufacturer’s LCD-TV panels.