Japan merged Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi's display units — and lost money every year since

Japan Display (JDI) was created on 1 April 2012 by merging the small and medium LCD businesses of Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi, backed by ¥200 billion from the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), a government-backed investment fund. The goal was to create a Japanese national champion in displays, competing with Samsung and LG of South Korea.

JDI listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 19 March 2014. It has reported consecutive losses in every year since. The company was slow to transition from LCD to OLED technology, and its revenue depended heavily on shrinking LCD sales to Apple. In 2017, JDI announced restructuring that included closing a production line and laying off about one-third of its workforce.

The Hakusan plant in Ishikawa Prefecture, built for $1.5 billion to produce displays for Apple, was partially idle by June 2019. In December 2019, JDI entered talks to sell it to Sharp for ¥80-90 billion — roughly $800 million, about half its construction cost. Apple invested $100 million in JDI in June 2019 and bought $200 million of LCD production equipment in 2020.

In February 2020, Ichigo Asset Management gained control of JDI in exchange for $715 million of investment, replacing the earlier Suwa Investment deal that had been terminated. The company that had been created to be Japan's display champion was now owned by a real-estate investment firm, sustained by its largest customer's bailouts, and still losing money.