Japan Display Inc. (JDI), a Japanese display manufacturer in financial distress, has carried out a large-scale restructuring that will cut more than half of its total workforce.
JDI said on the 10th that 1,483 employees applied for a voluntary redundancy program offered to 2,639 employees in Japan. That is close to the original target of 1,500 and equals 56% of its workforce in Japan. The job cuts will proceed in stages through March 2027.
JDI expects the restructuring to reduce annual labor costs by about 13.5 billion yen (about 1.27 trillion won). However, a one-time severance payment of 9.5 billion yen (about 890 billion won) is expected to be recognized as an expense.
JDI said that once the layoffs are completed, its headcount in Japan will fall to around 1,000. JDI is aiming to return to profit in the 2027 fiscal year (April 2026–March 2027) through steps including suspending operations at the Mobara plant and consolidating production at the Ishikawa plant, as well as shifting into non-display businesses.
JDI was launched in 2012 under a government-led initiative by integrating the display divisions of Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic, and was once called "the pride of Japan's display industry." It was formerly the largest LCD (liquid crystal display) supplier for Apple's iPhone and, until recently, also supplied some OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels for the Apple Watch.
However, its performance deteriorated as it lost ground to Korean and Chinese corporations. In the end, early this year it abandoned mass production of eLEAP (an OLED deposition technology that does not use FMM), which it had been pursuing as a next-generation technology, and recently it decided to sell a key plant and equipment that produced Apple Watch OLEDs, accelerating its downsizing.