April 24, 2008

Rumor: Pioneer Reached Plasma Panel Production Agreement With Matsushita

On Tuesday, Forbe's reported that Pioneer and Matsushita have yet to agree on the details of Pioneer's planned outsourcing of its plasma panel production. Back in March, Pioneer decided to quit producing plasma panels in-house sparking fears that the legendary Kuro series of high-end Pioneer plasma was done, but Pioneer later stated that they were only reorganizing their supply chain to reduce manufacturing costs. Basically, Pioneer plans to continue manufacturing the majority of the Kuro hardware in-house, but outsourcing plasma panel production so the company can begin mass producing LCD panels.

A Japanese newspaper published an unconfirmed report earlier this week that Pioneer plans to transfer 200 of their plasma engineers to Matsushita, and that a press conference would be called today or tomorrow announcing details of the agreement the companies reached. The company declined to comment, but did say they had no plans for a press conference this week and not to expect an announcement until at least mid-May.

Now, we have an unconfirmed rumor from a Japanese source that the two companies have reached a basic agreement that'll determine how Pioneer plans to incorporate Matsushita into their plasma panel supply chain. The details of the basic agreement we're not sure of at this point and we're still waiting on confirmation that the rumor is true, but we'll let you know what we find out later on.