Bangalore: The Japanese TV manufacturers Sony Corp. sold its stakes on an LCD venture to its counterpart Samsung Electronics Co. following the forecast of a fourth consecutive annual loss to the company this year.

Samsung will pay 1.08 trillion won ($ 935 million) to take over the 50 percent of stakes that Sony held in the 7 year old venture with S-LCD Corp. The venture was established to secure stable supply for Sony's flat screen TVs at a time of shortages. With this, Howard Stringer, Sony’s CEO will be relieved from the responsibility of panel manufacturing, amid it’s loses in the global market.

Sony’s movement was considered to be in the positive direction by analysts as Sony can shift to Taiwanese LCD makers for cheap prices. “It will also allow Sony to become more flexible in procuring panels”, said Shiro Mikoshiba, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Tokyo, while Samsung’s movement was not considered as a good one.

Sony, the world’s third largest flat panel TV maker had sold off its manufacturing factories in Slovakia, Spain and Mexico in the past few years. The company had dropped to a value of $18 billion following the declination of around 52 percent from its value of above $100 billion in the year 2000. Sony was criticized for not aggressively taking on its rivals like LG and Samsung in the competition of TV market. Despite this onetime loss in transaction, Sony hopes for a better long term results.

 The company reveals its plans on catching up with the rivals in the market by exploiting the multimedia contents and the compatibility of its product with devices like smartphones and tablets.