MEET THE VISIONARIES and
MEET THE VISIONARIES and the third is design. All three are equally important, I believe, and what’s important for us to “grab” these elements is customer insights. We need to listen to their needs, voices, and requirements. Customer insight serves as the basic foundation for us to develop any product if we really want it to be successful in the market. Picture quality is a technical driver and we need to ensure the technical advantages with picture quality, so it is mandatory, not an option. If you look at design and feature elements, these should be determined based on consumer insights. So we will be doing so after gathering the consumer insights. If I can elaborate on the consumer decision making insights, for example, we are living in the era of high energy prices, so consumer may need a TV model which consumes the least amount of energy as possible. So then we have to develop a model that consumes the least energy possible. Another example is that customers might want a TV that can be seamlessly incorporated in their interior environment. So then we can hire an interior design who can design a TV-set to seamlessly fit-in with that environment. So the product is one important factor to ensure a competitive edge in the market place. The second important thing is to ensure good communication with our target customers. So for that we need strong marketing capabilities. The third aspect is that the electronic industry fluctuates a lot, so we need very good supply chain management to maintain stability in our operations. What about Plasma? You have had some hard times financially and were looking, as one of your main challenges, to make this division more profitable for LG. How is that going? For us, Plasma TV is profitable this year. If you look at Plasma module, it is also profitable from cash-base perspectives. So we are now witnessing a different situation compared against last year. It is true as you pointed out that PDP is suffering slightly more than the LCD sector, but PDP has its own comfortable niche as well. So the demand for PDP may not increase as significantly as we have seen for LCD TVs, but at the same time the supply capabilities for PDP may not increase significantly either. So I think volume-wise, we might be able to strike a balance. There are definite benefits attached to PDP TVs. First of all, its main strength concerning its competitive edge is when watching video files or moving images compared to LCD. And second, it is known that PDP is less stressful for the eyes. So we can put more emphasis on these benefits as a marketing point. If you look at PDP technologies, we are putting a significant amount of R&D efforts for a high voltage and low electricity theme around PDP. So once we are able to garner some technical advantages based on these research findings, I believe that PDP can still be very competitive even against LCD. What is your roadmap for OLED display? We have transferred the management of OLED over to LG Display earlier this year, because OLED requires the combination of TFT LCD technology so we thought that transferring the management to LG Display would create a better synergetic effect but LGe is still the major shareholder of LG Display. So according to their development schedule, we will also be adjusting our development schedule for TV sets. Our starting point will be a small size screen and since the resolution would be the real strength of OLED, of course cost is also important to consider, but I still see a bright hope for OLED. All in all, for the screen sector, I believe that OLED and LCD will be two leading pillars in the future. LG is also developing 3D displays which is an interesting experiment, but will it ever be mainstream? It will take time. First of all, we have to wait until the broadcasting industry is fully ready for that. So the first launch will be somewhere around the promotion/commercial area. Once the broadcasting industry is ready and contents are also made available, then we could develop it together. As someone who has worked on the three main continents, how do you see the LCD/Plasma TV market evolving in Europe as opposed to the USA and Asia? What are the differences here? The space that people are living in is obviously different by country. When I talk about space, it also includes the layout of furniture, and what they are hanging on their walls as well. In the US, people tend to have bigger living rooms, so they need a bigger TV. In European countries, they have a very unique sense of space. It’s smaller and they have more pictures and ornaments on the wall. So they might need smaller and medium sized TVs than in the US. Each country in Europe also has outstanding characteristics. For example, Germans tend to like simpler, minimalistic designs whereas the French tend to admire curviness. Even looking at their automobiles, Volkswagen or Audi compared to Renault, you can see this difference. So when we are producing our product portfolio, I think it’s important for us to cater to these kinds of countryspecific preferences. I take a lot of good references from the car industry in relation to design. I lived in Germany for 10 years, so I have a personal affection attached to Germany. When I recently went back, I still found that their design preferences are still clearly defined and clean. Since joining LG in 1986 as a general manager for the company's facility in Worms, Germany, Mr. Kang has built up impressive international experience through a number of management positions overseas in Germany, Canada and the United States as well as in Seoul. In 2000, he moved up to become President of LG Electronics' U.S. Digital Appliance Brand Management division, leading the successful launch of LG's digital appliance business in the U.S. Before taking his current position, Mr. Kang was the company's Head of Korean Sales and Marketing Operations. Hall 11.2 / Stand 101 20 www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Saturday, 30 th & Sunday, 31 st August 2008
FEATURE INTERVIEW EDDIE YEO EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND HEAD OF TV BUSINESS UNIT - LG DISPLAY By Richard Barnes “...understand customers’ needs and bring products to market at an affordable price.” light with low power consumption. For LCD TV, customers want a sharp and vivid picture. In order to satisfy customers’ needs, LGD has commercialised a DFR (Double Frame Rate) product for the first time, which also has a cost advantage. As the design factor will be increasingly important for TVs in the future, we have also launched slim & narrow product for the first time. How would you describe the philosophy of LG Display when it comes to manufacturing LCD displays? At LG Display, we believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that flat panel displays are enabling rich and expressive images to be incorporated into ever more areas of our lives. Whether your display is a large and wide full highdefinition TV, a set of highresolution monitors or a wide-format notebook PC, it is important that viewers see the best looking image possible. LG Display has a long history of being on the cuttingedge SONY of OLED the TVflat panel industry’s technical developments, introducing new products and technology to meet the needs of its superior customer base. Tell us about some of the benchmarks in your history of panel making. TIn Q3 ’97 we launched the world’s first 14.1-inch XGA notebook panel, in Q4 ’01 we brought to market the world’s first 20-inch UXGA monitor panel and in Q4 ’03 we launched the world’s first 42-inch wide XGA HDTV panel. In addition, we have received SID Display of the year Gold award in ‘03~’04. In ’06, we launched a 100” TFT LCD as the world’s largest LCD panel, and in ’07, our Flexible OLED was selected in Time’s “Best invention of the year.” This trend of production innovation is something our customers have come to expect and trust us to deliver. What are the most important things in the development of LCD technology at the moment? One of the factors is that the LCD industry has gone through tremendous growth in such a short amount of time is that it has satisfied both customers’ desire for fancy design and high quality display. The most important thing in the development of LCD technology is to understand customers’ needs and bring products to market at an affordable price. For example, laptop users want portable and long battery life products. That is why LGD is focusing on an LED backlit product, which is slim & How is LG Display creating added-value for TV manufacturers? The most important thing in creating added-value for our customers is to understand their needs and provide product with a competitive price at the right time. For this, LGD is focusing on developing collaborative products with major strategic partners. In the case of IPS, LGD’s differentiated technology, we are currently undertaking a number of co-marketing programs to increase sales for the customers who are using our IPS panels in their LCD TVs and monitors, by promoting the superiority of IPS. Hall 11.2 / Stand 101 A Cleverdis SPECIALreport on LG Display’s IPS technology is available at the LG stand. IFA International • Saturday, 30 th & Sunday, 31 st August 2008 www.ifa-international.org 21
