Sony, who is trying to buy into digital camera maker Olympus, is close to cutting an OLED TV manufacturing deal with Panasonic who is also trying to buy into Olympus.Sony, who has never made a profit in the flat panel TV market, is tipped to announce the manufacturing deal with Panasonic later this week.
Both Companies are set to hold shareholder meetings on June 27, with the joint announcement tipped to be made late in the day.
Currently both LG and Samsung are set to launch a 55″ OLED this year, the TV is set to retail for around $9,999.
The Sony-Panasonic partnership would be the first between the two Japanese Companies who are both losing money from flat panel TV sales.
OLED televisions are as thin as 4 millimetres (0.16 inches) and produce sharper images than current liquid-crystal-display models. Shipments of OLED TVs may grow to 2.1 million sets in 2015 from 34,000 in 2012, according to iSuppli.
Nikkei is also claiming that Sony will snap up a ten per cent share in Olympus for $620m.
This would make Sony the single largest shareholder at Olympus, which is still reeling from last year’s accounting scandal, when it failed to declare investment losses and overstated profits.
The report suggests Olympus could take advantage of Sony’s market share in the imaging sector to lower its production costs and end two years of losses.
