Packaging and testing sector under pressure

Taiwan's leading suppliers of driver IC packaging and test services, including ChipMos Technologies Inc (南茂科技), International Semiconductor Technology Ltd (飛信半導體), Chipbond Corp (頎邦科技) and SPIL, are expected to cover more than 60 percent of global demand for some 2.2 billion large panel-used driver ICs this year.

With international IDM giants and semiconductor makers forced to outsource back-end lines to preserve their core competitiveness due to the evolution of the semiconductor manufacturing process toward the more sophisticated and delicate "nano" level, a market worth billions of US dollars exists for Taiwanese providers of packaging and test services.