Canon to invest in Flat Panel R&D Lab

Canon to invest in Flat Panel R&D Lab

Makers of digital cameras and other electronic goods Canon have announced plans to invest heavily in a Flat Panel R&D Center. The company recently launched the much-awaited Canon 5D Digital SLR and also happens to be the world’s biggest maker of photocopiers. The investment is going to be in the region of around 20.8 billion yen and the company aims to develop technologies to manufacture cheaper flat panel displays used in televisions.

The newly launched R and D center would employee around 150 engineers and other tech people and it would be located near the existing factory of Canon in Hiratsuka. This place is around 50 KM away from the capital city of Tokyo in Japan. The company would be focusing the research in this lab on the surface conduction electron emitter, or SED, displays.

Canon develop these products in collaboration with the tech giant Toshiba. Canon President Fujio Mitarai said in a statement about these new developments: “Price competition for displays is becoming more severe and we need to develop equipment that can cut costs”. Both these companies are together investing 180 billion yen over two years to mass-produce the displays, which faces competition from liquid crystal and plasma display televisions.

Toshiba has already announced plans to stop making plasma TVs in favor of the SEDs. The companies plan to start the mass production of these devices in early 2007.