Abstract (eng)
The liquid crystal display (LCD) industry has witnessed an extraordinary growth in the past twenty years, especially in the East Asian Region, with market leaders situated across Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Mainland China. Among them, Taiwan and South Korea became the largest provider of thin film transistor LCDs (TFT-LCDs) at the turn of the century. How-ever, with the entrance of China as a competitor, both nations are facing an unprecedented threat. It is uncertain if Taiwan and Korea can maintain their leadership in the TFT-LCD in-dustry. Against this backdrop, this study is set out to examine the competitiveness of the Tai-wanese and Korean TFT-LCD industry. For this purpose, Porter’s Diamond Model of national competitiveness and its extensions are utilized to develop a greater understanding of Taiwan’s and South Korea’s unique competitive advantages.
As the results of the analysis show, the key success factors of Taiwan and Korea are their fa-vorable factor conditions, particularly their skilled workforce, their specialized educational system and hard infrastructure. Furthermore, spillovers from related semiconductor industry and the increasingly localized display part and material industries, both stimulated TFT-LCD industry growth. Taiwan and Korea also benefited from supportive governmental measures and strategic multinational activities of TFT-LCD manufacturers. Yet, as the study revealed, both nations are suffering from China’s expansion plans since much of the demand is cap-tured by Chinese manufacturers.