Japan's Canon Inc is still focused on globally producing the next generation of flat panel televisions despite a legal setback that has thrown the debut and rollout of the new product into doubt.
"We are not limiting our views to the Japanese market. We have the global market in mind," Canon's President and Chief Operating Officer Tsuneji Uchida told Reuters in an interview. Speaking in Monaco, where the company was celebrating its 50th year in Europe, Uchida said on Monday that Canon was keen to resolve the dispute and sort out production constraints involving both the new screens and across the entire business.
Last week, a US court ruled that Canon does not have to pay additional damages to Texas-based Nano-Proprietary Inc over the violation of a licence for making flat-panels known as surface-conduction electron-emitter displays or SEDs.
Canon, the world's top maker of copiers and digital cameras, began research on SED panels in 1986 and had been collaborating with Toshiba Corp over the new TVs, which promise high clarity, faster response, greater energy efficiency and a wider viewing angle than existing LCD or plasma TVs.
"We currently have a facility for production of SEDs, but it is still limited, the capacity is limited, therefore we can only produce as much as the capacity will allow," Uchida said. When Canon and Toshiba set up the joint venture in 2004 to develop the panels, the initial plan was to mass-produce the new SED TVs in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The court ruling that Nano could terminate the licence after Canon tried to share the technology with Toshiba prompted Canon to buy out Toshiba's share of their display joint venture. The SED rollout poses a challenge for Uchida, particularly as the company is trying to stay ahead of rivals that are pursuing different technologies such as ultra-thin TVs using organic light-emitting diode (OLED), which Sony Corp plans to introduce this year.
Uchida said he did not want to comment further on the Nano legal dispute because it was ongoing and subject to appeal. "We need to resolve this current situation before we can decide on when and how much we will produce and sell," he said, as Canon has so far only said it will produce a limited number of SED TVs in Japan by the end of the year.
Canon has been one of the top three patent-receiving organisations in the US for more than a decade and invests more than 10 percent of its non-consolidated net sales in research and development every year. This represents a sizable sum for a company that expects its full-year net sales to rise to 4.54 trillion yen ($37.80 billion) this year, compared with 4.16 trillion yen in 2006.
Uchida, a former head of Canon's camera operations who has been with the company since 1965, said the challenge of producing precision products fast and cheaply enough was an important part of its growth strategy.
Given this, Canon is increasingly using robotics technology on its production lines, applications that Uchida thinks could also open up new business with other companies that may be involved in sensor-related work, surveillance or image testing.
"It is not about developing a humanoid robot," said Uchida. "What we are trying to do is to improve the productivity and the quality of our assembly lines and we are developing the robots for this purpose." In a separate interview with Reuters, Canon Europe's head of corporate strategy Jean-Louis Gregoire said buying businesses in key new areas would play a role in working towards that target.