On August 31, 2011,
Sony,
Toshiba, and
Hitachi agreed to a merger of their respective small-to-medium-sized
LCD businesses, supported by an investment of two hundred billion yen from
INCJ. Soon after, INCJ and Panasonic also began talks on the acquisition of one of Panasonic's factories. JDI has started its operation on April 1, 2012, after it had finalized the agreement between the stakeholders on November 15, 2011. In April 2013, Japan Display West, Japan Display Central, and Japan Display East were merged. In October, Taiwan Display Inc. was established. On March 19, 2014, the company was listed on the first section of the
Tokyo Stock Exchange. JDI had accumulated consecutive losses since its IPO, a restructuring plan was announced in 2017, including closing down a production line in Japan and layoffs of approximately a third of its workforce. A newly created entity INCJ, Ltd. had become the largest shareholder of JDI with 25,29 % of total shares since September 21, 2018 as a result of a corporate split of the old INCJ. From 2019 onwards, the company began to actively seek further investments as its financial difficulties worsened. It went on to sign a memorandum of understanding to sell 49.82% of the company to Suwa Investment Holdings LLC at a sale price of US$715 million. Suwa was the name of a group of investors, which included the Chinese
Silk Road Fund and Harvest Tech Investment Management, Taiwan's TPK Holdings, and
Fubon Financial Holdings. On June 12, 2019, JDI disclosed that major changes are to be implemented due to sluggish sales in the Mobile Business Division. It announced one plant would be closed and another has suspended operation. A major reduction of the workforce was also planned. On June 27, $100 million investment was announced by
Apple, boosting the stock price of JDI by 32 percent at the time. In October 2019, JDI revealed it has started producing OLED displays for Apple's
smartwatch. The Hakusan plant was built in 2015 and began operations in 2016 at a cost of US$1.5 billion, and has been partly idle since June 2019, due to Apple's use of
OLED displays. Due to the financial trouble caused by its late decision to manufacture OLED displays and the loan from Apple, the company's OLED affiliate,
JOLED, has not yet been able to compete with other manufacturers, whilst more than half of JDI's revenue still came from the shrinking
IPS LCD panel sales to Apple. ==Technology==