Sharp plans to invest 275 billion yen next fiscal year to maintain its top spot in the liquid crystal display TV market, President Katsuhiko Machida said Wednesday.

Machida said much of the money would be spent on boosting production at its liquid crystal display factory, which is simply unable to keep up with surging demand for LCDs used in flat-panel TVs, cell phones and laptops.

"We boast our own technology, and we hope to continue to be recognized as a unique No. 1 company," he said.

Robust demand for the sleek flat-panel TVs, which offer sharper images and take up less space than ordinary televisions, has surprised manufacturers. A typical 32-inch LCD television costs about 200,000 yen.

Sharp Corp. is among several Asian electronics makers, including Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., a Japanese rival that makes Panasonic brand products, vying for consumers in the new -- and rapidly growing -- flat-panel TV market.

Some 190 billion yen of the new capital will go into Sharp's core liquid crystal display business starting in March.

With the latest investment, production at Sharp's second panel plant in Japan will climb from 15,000 LCD sheets a month to 30,000 next year, and to 90,000 a month sometime in 2008, the company said. The expansion will quadruple Sharp's panel production capacity at its two plants to 20 million 32-inch TV sets a year from 5 million today.

Machida's comments at a New Year's gathering for the media at a Tokyo hotel came a day after Matsushita announced a 180 billion yen investment in a new plasma display-panel plant, boosting its joint venture's production capacity to the largest in the world.

The successive announcements underline the determination of Japanese companies to succeed in the flat-panel race, which also includes LG Electronics Inc., Philips Electronics NV, Sony Corp. and other big names.