March 3, 2005, Tokyo, Japan--The inaugural Global Flat Panel Display Partners Conference (GFPC) achieved extremely promising progress in promoting cooperation among executives within the FPD industry, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).

About 160 CEOs, presidents and senior-level executives from more than 10 countries convened from February 27 to March 2 in Nago City (Okinawa, Japan) at the exclusive FPD gathering to discuss the hurdles associated with the business, manufacturing and technologies of the display space; the FPD forecast and outlook; and leveraging networking opportunities for information exchange and collaboration.

"Industry participants were extremely pleased with the success of our first-ever GFPC," noted Dennosuke Uchida, president of SEMI Japan. "This summit was designed to help further strengthen the innovative power of the global FPD industry as a whole. Both the caliber and the number of attendees demonstrates strong interest among today's players in joining a cooperative dialogue to address the hurdles and challenges facing this sector -- and to take the industry to new heights. Based on the strong conference results this year, SEMI has confirmed the venue for GFPC 2006."

In his keynote address, Jun H. Souk, Samsung Electronics' executive vice president, discussed how to manage the liquid crystal display (LCD) cycle, highlighting the FPD industry's need to adapt to the ever-changing cyclicality of the LCD space and to develop new equipment and processes for next-generation manufacturing to ensure continued success and growth.

Shigeo Nakabu, corporate senior executive of Sharp's LCD business also delivered a keynote address on his perspectives of the LCD market. Nakabu discussed the new and growing markets for LCDs, as well as the need for larger, higher performance LCDs at affordable price points in order to compete with other display technologies for TV applications.

In the last keynote speech, Hajime Sasaki, chairman of the board, NEC, gave an impressive presentation about global importance of EHS, and presented critical issues the industry is facing and working to resolve.

The GFPC also held several panel sessions: on outlooks and forecasts on the future of the PC monitor; mobile displays and FPD TV sectors; and an executive roundtable that discussed new display technologies and applications, as well as a FPD industry forecast for the coming decade.

Thu Mar 03 00:01:00 CST 2005