Corning Inc, which cut its workforce by more than half since 2001 as sales of its fiber-optical cable plummeted, will add workers this year to keep pace with soaring demand for glass used in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) for flat-panel televisions and computer monitors.
Employment should rise from about 20,000 at the end of last year, chief financial officer Jim Flaws said in an interview. He declined to provide a specific number of hires. Most of the new jobs will be at LCD-glass factories in Japan and Taiwan.
Shipments of LCD glass rose 50 percent last year and are expected to rise 30 percent to 50 percent this year, Flaws said.
Corning said it sold out of glass during fourth-quarter, and is adding capacity to keep up with demand from customers such as Samsung Corp and Sharp Corp.
"This one business is supplying all of its profit and more than offsetting the loss of its other businesses," said Needham & Co analyst John Harmon.
"That's going to drive the company over the next couple of years," he said.
The company said on Feb. 5 that it would invest US$600 million during the next two years to expand its LCD glass plants in Shizuoka, Japan, and Tainan.
Corning had cut about 21,000 positions since 2001 as sales of fiber-optic cable dropped after telephone and Internet carriers built networks for traffic that never materialized. The company can better predict demand for LCD glass by tracking sales of LCD televisions and notebook computers, Flaws said.
"Nobody buys a notebook computer they're not going to use," Flaws said in a March 19 interview. "In telecom, there were no end-market statistics."
Corning expects LCD televisions, which require larger, more expensive sheets of glass than notebook computers, to fuel future sales growth, Flaws said.
About 3 percent of televisions sold last year had LCD displays, a number that is expected to rise to 16 percent in 2006, Harmon said.
Corning's revenue in its display technologies business, which includes LCD glass, rose 47 percent to US$595 million last year from US$405 million a year earlier. Net sales last year slipped to US$3.09 billion from US$3.16 billion.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last