Pioneer Corp. announced Tuesday it will acquire NEC Corp.'s plasma display panel business in a bid to remain a leading player within the increasingly competitive flat-panel TV sector.

Terms of the deal have yet to be worked out, though Pioneer President Kaneo Ito said the price of the acquisition is "somewhere around" the 40 billion yen quoted in news reports.

The deal will make Pioneer the world's second-largest PDP maker, after Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display Ltd., according to data supplied by DisplaySearch of the U.S.