A shortage of charge-coupled devices (CCD) used in digital cameras should ease in the latter half of this year, an analyst at government-funded Market Intelligence Center (MIC, 市場情報中心) said yesterday.
"Although the shortage of CCDs in the second quarter this year had a heavy impact on the global digital-camera industry, we expect supply will gradually recover and rebound to comfortable levels in early 2003," Yvonne Chen (陳依凡), an industry researcher at MIC, said yesterday.
CCDs are light-sensitive integrated circuits that store and display data that make up an image. CCDs are a necessary component for a digital camera to sense and capture images.
Four Japanese companies -- Sony Corp, FujiFilm, Sharp Electronic Corp and Panasonic Matsushita Electric Corp -- constitute the world's major CCD producers.
Because of the CCD shortage, digital-camera output by Taiwanese makers fell 6.9 percent to 3.788 million units during the first half of the year compared to the same time a year ago, MIC said.
Starting early last year, international consumer brands including Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Kodak and Konica began to give OEM orders to Taiwanese manufacturers such as Premier Image Technology Inc (
Taiwanese digital-camera makers account for roughly 33 percent of world demand, while Japanese manufacturers command more than 60 percent of the market, MIC said. South Korean manufacturers take the remainder.
A Chinese-language newspaper yesterday speculated that Japanese CCD producers were creating an artificial shortage, with the goal of undermining the market share of Taiwanese manufacturers.
But Chen didn't agree with the report, saying the shortage was the result of natural market conditions. "Global digital-camera demand has increased rapidly over the past 12 months and CCD production couldn't keep pace," she said.
Another analyst agreed with that assessment, adding that industry players had also misjudged demand for digital cameras.
"In late 2001, most Japanese CCD makers estimated that the [world] economy would be slower in 2002 and decided to lower production," said Weng Min-sun (翁敏松), an analyst at Yuanta Core Pacific Securities Corp (元大晶華證券). "But global demand for digital cameras is surging."
Worldwide sales of digital cameras is estimated to climb 30 percent this year, Weng said. He didn't supply an estimate for the number of units sold.
Weng said there was no financial reason for Japanese companies to hold back on CCD production. Indeed, Japanese suppliers have assured local camera makers a stable supply of CCDs through the end of August, he said.
According to MIC, Taiwan is set to ship 8.753 million digital cameras this year, up 10.2 percent from last year. Production value is expected to jump 19.7 percent to US$1 billion.
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