China favours foreign JVs for new LCD TVs-official

BEIJING, Sept 27 (Reuters) Beijing is in favour of key Chinese television producers such as TCL Corp forming alliances with foreign firms to produce 7.5- or eighth-generation flat-screen LCD panels, a senior official said on Thursday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, a vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's planning agency, was speaking at a news conference.

Sharp Corp denied in January a Taiwan media report that it planned to build China's first 7.5-generation LCD factory in a venture with TCL and the government of Shenzhen, a boomtown in southern China that neighbours Hong Kong. TCL also denied the report.

TCL, once the world's biggest manufacturer of TVs, is now the fifth-largest producer with a 5.6 percent share of the global market in the second quarter, according to U.S. research firm iSuppli.

Samsung Electronics kept its position as market leader thanks to its strength in LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs, the researcher said on Tuesday, Samsung had 12.4 percent of the global market in the April-June quarter, followed by fellow Korean manufacturer LG Electronics with 11.4 percent and Dutch group Philips with 7.1 percent. Japan's Sanyo Electric took fourth place with 6.3 percent, according to iSuppli.

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