TFT LCD面板主流設計與競合策略關係之研究

Abstract

在預期TFT LCD市場成長力道強勁時，選擇擴建新世代廠為面板廠商最主要的競爭策略之一。早期，擴建新世代廠總是以技術創新為最主要的考量，每一個跨世代的建廠就是要突破一個世代的技術障礙。隨著產業動態的演變，技術創新已被視為不得不具備的當然要素，以產能擴充為手段來建立對主流產品之主導權，則成為新的競賽規則與策略考量。 本研究依據TFT LCD產業的實際發展情形觀察，在不同時期的確存在主流產品的現象，而且該主流產品的尺寸大小與該時期主力面板廠的玻璃基板切割尺寸的經濟性，存在著密切的關係，亦即不同世代面板廠的最佳切割效率的產品尺寸，便決定了該產品的價格競爭力。因此，愈多廠商投資於同一世代的新廠，該世代廠最具價格競爭力的產品便愈可能形成主流設計。這使得面板廠在選擇投資新世代技術時，不能全以技術超越為考量，而必須將產品競爭與合作的關係納入全盤決策架構中。準此立論基礎，本研究藉由台灣廠商在發展TFT LCD產業的歷程資料，討論主流設計形成的機制，並進而分析面板廠如何藉由擴建新世代廠來推動主流設計，並進而形成競爭優勢。 本研究提出幾項主要發現與建議。第一，主流產品主導權的競爭生態中，面板廠不僅要藉次世代技術創新來搶先制訂產品尺寸的規格之外，還必須同時鞏固該次世代廠的產能規模，兩者兼備才是決定競爭成敗的關鍵。第二，掌握主流產品的主導權，並不是一定要靠自己獨力新建次世代廠來達成，面板廠之間具有互補屬性者，藉著改變遊戲規則，由原是互相競爭的態勢，變成互相合作的伙伴，發展出既競爭又合作的競合關係。 總結面板廠的競合策略，包括以掌握主流設計主導權的供應端推動策略，以及用輔助主流設計形成的市場端牽引策略。由於未來產品發展更驅多元，主流設計的形成因素更驅複雜，面板廠除了在供應端採取推動策略之外，還必須善用競合關係，輔以市場端的牽引策略，才能確保競爭優勢。

One of the major competitive strategies that TFT LCD panel manufacturers usually undertook was to preempt the production capacity of the next-generation LCD plants. During the industry development stage, the central factor leading toward investing in a next-generation plant was the extent of technology innovation. As the industry evolved, the technology innovation was treated as a given factor, while to dominate a particular product specification by means of production capacity expansion had become a new rule of competition among LCD manufacturers. Because each generation of LCD plant has its own sweet product sizes with optimum cutting efficiency, the product with better cutting efficiency therefore reveals better competitive advantages in terms of production cost. If there are more LCD panel manufacturers invested in the same generation plant, their collective output for this sweet product would be more likely to become the dominant design in the market. Taking this phenomenon into research consideration, the present study analyzes the logic and mechanism for the emergence of a dominant design in the panel market, with which understanding we elaborate how the LCD manufacturers could master the emergence of a dominant design with right capacity expansion strategy, hence creating competitive advantages. Our study concluded with two suggestions for the LCD manufacturers. First, the leading LCD manufacturer not only has to leverage its techonolgy strength to define the cutting-dege product specification by constructing next-generation plants, but also has to invest in production capacity expansion of next-generation plants. Second, to take the advantage of leading the emergence of a dominant design, LCD manufacturers shall leverage their co-opeitors to expand the capacity of focal next-generation plants, instead of constructing all by their own efforts. Implications for co-opetition strategies of LCD panel manufacturers are further discussed.