Expanding from EL Type Standish purchase puts passive LCDs at Planar By David Lieberman, EE Times Beaverton, Ore. -- Planar Systems Inc. will acquire LCD maker Standish Industries Inc. (Lake Mills, Wis.) at the end of September, making Planar "the largest independent merchant supplier of flat-panel displays in the United States," said James Hurd, Planar's president and chief executive officer, as he announced the deal last week. The Standish acquisition will add passive LCDs and LCD modules to Planar's broadening lineup of display technology, and expand its market share in an industry dominated by Asian giants. Once a small manufacturer of electroluminescent (EL) displays, 14-year-old Planar has made a number of strategic moves in the last few years to transform itself from a one-horse display stable into an information-display company with both breadth and depth. At first glance, the Standish acquisition would seem to provide Planar with an internal source for LCDs, which it now buys. But that was not the rationale. While Standish does not make LCDs with the size and resolution of the panels Planar integrates into display systems, Hurd has other things in mind. "Our systems business sources commodity passive and active-matrix LCDs, and over time we'll start to build-in our own LCDs," he said. "But that was not a priority in terms of the decision [to acquire Standish]. Our No. 1 priority is to build market share in our target markets." In these target market segments--for medical electronics and transportation, for example--Planar "pretty much owns the nonbattery-powered monochrome segment with monochrome EL," said Hurd. "And with our new color AM-LCD, we're improving at the high end." Standish will help fill a hole at the low end of Planar's product line for battery-operable products, Hurd said. "Our game plan is to have a sales force that can go into major accounts in our target markets and offer one-stop shopping with a full selection, from handheld battery-operable product up to high-performance full-color video displays." Some in the industry took a less sanguine view. "Planar has been diversifying out of EL because in my view, it [EL] is doomed," said Alan Sobel, a consulting physicist and engineer based in Evanston, Ill. It's the high-priced spread and it's going to remain that way unless somebody does something wonderful with organic EL, which is entirely possible." Planar has increased its revenues from about $40 million in 1992 to $60 million in 1994 and $80 million last year. While that's not a big chunk of the roughly $12 billion world market for flat-panel displays, according to figures from the market analyst Stanford Resources (San Jose, Calif.), it demonstrates faster growth than the 16 percent compound annual growth rate that Stanford predicts for the industry as a whole through 2002. In addition to the passive LCD line it obtains from Standish, the Planar stable now includes military/avionic CRTs, miniature active-matrix electroluminescent displays and active-matrix LCDs, the last through a partnership with dpiX (Palo Alto, Calif.). At the same time, the company has deepened its display business to include monitors, terminals and specialized display systems for market niches that include passive- and active-matrix LCDs purchased from Asian manufacturers. Planar is also teaming up with Eastman Kodak and the Sarnoff Corp. to develop organic electroluminescent displays. And in May, it acquired Flat Candle Corp. (Colorado Springs, Colo.), an LCD backlighting company. Standish could not be reached for comment. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. (c) 1997 CMP Media, Inc [This article comes from EE Times in a joint cooperative effort with the Motley Fool. For more articles like it, please look at Fool's Gold every weekend or simply go to the Fool's Gold Mine and page through our back issues, which all have clever and cool EE Times articles in them.]

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