History
The name Finlux first appeared in 1964, when Iskumetalli began marketing TV sets with that brand name after being acquired by the Finnish Lohja conglomerate. Iskumetalli was founded in 1949 and had been manufacturing TV sets since 1958. In 1971, it was renamed Finlux; this was the first time that Finlux had been used as a company name.
In 1977, Lohja started manufacturing Electroluminescence (EL) displays after purchasing the development project, headed by Dr. Tuomo Suntola. The EL displays were manufactured using the atomic layer deposition (ALD) process developed in the project, and were marketed using Finlux brand.
In 1979, Lohja acquired another Finnish TV manufacturer, Asa Radio, which had been manufacturing radio receivers since 1927.
In 1991, the EL manufacturing was sold to Planar. A new company, Planar International was formed to continue manufacturing EL displays in Espoo, Finland. Planar later consolidated all of its EL manufacturing in Espoo and closed its Oregon EL facility.
In 1992, Finlux TV manufacturing was sold to Nokia, which already was manufacturing TV sets with brands Salora, Schaub-Lorenz and Oceanic.
In 1996, Nokia sold all its TV factories and brand names to Hong Kong company Semi-Tech, which continued manufacturing TV sets in one factory in Finland until the year 2000, when the Finnish subsidiary of Semi-Tech filed for bankruptcy.
A new company under the old Finlux name, owned by Norwegian company Otrum Electronics, was formed to continue TV manufacturing. However, they had serious troubles with their product line, which was based on CRT TVs. The market had swung to flat panel TVs and Finlux failed to switch in time. With 50 million euros in debt, the company filed for bankruptcy in September 2005.
In 2006, the Turkish electronics company Vestel, owned by the Zorlu Holding corporate group, bought the Finlux brand. Vestel, Europe’s largest and the world’s third largest television manufacturer, boasts nearly 25% of the UK TV market
In late 2011, Finlux Direct (FinluxDirect.com) was launched selling Finlux LED, LCD and 3D TVs exclusively online and direct to their customers.
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