J Touch Corp (介面光電), the nation's biggest touch panel maker, yesterday said it planned to double its production next year to meet rapidly growing demand, as an increasing number of wireless devices are fitted with the screens.
The Taoyuan-based company planned to expand its annual output by 92 percent to 48 million 3.5-inch screens next year from 25 million units this year.
"Demand for touch panels have spiked since the launch of Apple's iPhone. J Touch has developed new technologies to supply touch screens at a lower cost," company chairman Yeh Yu-chou (
Overall, touch panel shipments are expected to jump to 95 million units in 2010 from 55 million units this year, boosted by rising demand for handsets, global positioning systems (GPS) and game consoles, Taipei-based market researcher Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所) said.
J Touch primarily makes less advanced, resistive touch panels for single-touch navigation, rather than the more advanced touch screens of iPhones with sensitive multi-touch navigation.
Local liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panel maker and monitor assembler Innolux Display Corp (
Revenues grew nearly 90 percent to NT$1.82 billion (US$56.24 million) in the first 11 months from NT$966 million a year ago.
J Touch has developed a new generation of resistive touch and single-layer screens featuring multi-touch navigation at a lower cost. The company expects to begin manufacturing the screens in the second quarter of next year.
"The new touch screens will be very competitive by price and we are confident that the new touch panels will replace," current multi-touch navigation screens on the market, Yeh said.
J Touch has inked a deal to supply the enhanced touch screens to South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co for cellphones and is expected to expand its customer base to Japanese digital camera makers in the second half of next year, Yeh said.
J Touch started trading its shares on the Emergent Stock Market (
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