JIYA 社の総経理 Charles Wang 氏とのインタービュー

Q1 Please, briefly describe JIYA to our readers.

Hebei Jiya Electronics Co., Ltd. (JIYA) is a high-tech company specializing in manufacturing and sales of LCD and LCM. The company is established in 1993 with headquarter located in the city of Shijiazhuang (the capital of Hebei Province), which is about 300Km from Beijing, China.

JIYA has three subsidiary factories: Hebei Jiya, Jiya LangFang and Jiya Shanghai and has more than 1500 employees total. All three factories are both ISO 9001:2008 and ISO/TS 16949:2009 certified.  JIYA makes both monochrome LCD/LCM and color small/medium size TFT-LCD modules.

With strong LCD R&D and manufacturing capability, Jiya has been a leading LCD company in China since 1993. JIYA makes nearly 1000 kinds of standard and customized LCD products every year. They are sold to over 40 countries around the world. Its key customers include Schneider Electronics, United Technologies Corporation, Emerson, Danaher, LXD, Haier and some of the other Fortune 500 companies.

Q2 What are, in your view, the strong points that differentiate JIYA products from those of the competition?

JIYA is unique compared to our competitors in the following ways:

1. We have a very strong R&D team that keeps us at the forefront of LCD/LCM manufacturing technology;
2. Our vertically integrated structure ensures us to be not only very competitive in the cost of the LCDs/LCMs we provide, but also very flexible and reactive to the special needs of our customers;
3. Our wide sales and services network ensures our customers get the most prompt services.
4. We have 20+ years history of providing reliable LCDs worldwide. More than 65% of our LCDs are used in industrial applications, which have much high quality standard than the displays used in the consumer electronics.

Q3 What markets do you see your company targeting in the future?

JIYA is steadily expanding our product markets in Asia (especially Japan and China), North America, and Europe. In addition, we are seeing rapid growth in many emerging markets in the rest of the world.

From the product point of view, we are seeing the following markets having the biggest growth, which will be our focus in the future:

1. Small/Medium size TFT-LCD (with or without touch) for “smart” electronics (such as household electronics, smart meter etc) application;
2. Low power monochrome LCDs for wearable or handheld device and digital price tag application; 
3. Customized TFT-LCDs for agriculture and construction vehicles. These customers are following the trend of automotive industry and start to use TFT-LCDs in their future product lines.

Q4 As you expand your color TFT LCD offerings, what is the outlook of these products in the marketplace?

The market for color TFT LCD has been growing at a very fast speed in the last two year after people worldwide are getting used to smartphones with touch function. This increased demand of TFT LCD in many areas, together with the improvement in display performance and the reduction of module price, propels further growth in the next decade.

JIYA is introducing a new line of standard TFT-LCDs products with size ranging from 2.8” to 15.6” this year. Customers will have choice of various touch panel options as well as brightness selections for different environments. Customer inquiries on these color TFT-LCD products have increased more than 50% this year.

Q5 Are there any specific segments where you foresee potential for growth in the Japanese market?

For color display, we expect the small and medium sized color TFT LCD with touch option to be the main growth segment in the near future. For monochrome LCD, we expect the low power TN/STN LCD will be the trend for wearable device and digital price tag market.

Q6 What is your setup for technical support for customers in Japan?

We have a great partner and distributor Global Electronics (GEC) in Japan, which provides both technical and sales window to our customers in Japan. GEC has a highly trained sales and technical team, which has been in display and electronics related field for many years. They are by far the most responsive and have the best customer service among our distributors in Asia pacific region. We are very fortunate to have them as our key partner in Japan;

Every year, we also send a team of sales and technical members to Japan. We will spend one week at GEC to train GEC team with seminars as well as visiting potential customers. We will update GEC and our Japan customers on the latest JIYA product offering, technology and development.

Q7 What are your expectations relative to the future of your partnership with Global Electronics?

Our partnership with Global Electronics is very important to us. As a leading LCD company in China, we put strong emphasis on long-term strategy and growth. We are very optimistic about our future collaboration and growth together in Japan. JIYA greatly appreciates the support that Global provides to customers in Japan.

Q8 Finally, please use this space to send a brief message to our Japanese customers.

First of all, thank you for using JIYA’s LCD products. It is widely known that Japan is the global leader in the electronics industry. We are very impressed with the high level of quality and precision that our Japanese customers expect on our LCD product, which helps Jiya to understand the market and improve our quality and engineering capability even further. We feel very honored to be part of the frontline of cutting-edge LCD technology. It’s a validation for the quality of our products. We are committed to working closely with Global Electronics to provide the best products and services to our Japanese customers.