The penetration of thinner and power-saving light emitting diode (LED) backlight TVs may grow slowly to 2 percent this year and to 11 percent by 2012, because the economic recession and some technological obstacles could limit the growth, Taipei-based researcher LEDinside said yesterday.
In a forecast by WitsView, a liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panel research house, about 2.28 million units out of 114 million LCD TVs would be equipped with LED backlights, replacing widely used cold cathode fluorescent lamps as the backlight source, LEDinside said.
This year, LED TVs may make up only 1 percent of overall LCD TV shipments despite expectations that a growing number of LED TVs are expected to hit the market this year, the research house said.
Samsung, the world’s biggest flat-panel TV maker, said it started selling 40-inch, 46-inch and 55-inch LED TVs last month in Europe and is scheduled to sell a full line of its LED TVs, from 32-inch to 55-inch models, in Taiwan in June.
The South Korean company said its LED TVs could save up to 40 percent in power consumption compared with LCD TVs of the same screen size.
As prices for LED TVs were about 60 percent to 80 percent higher than those of LCD TVs, it would take a while for LED TVs to gain traction, LEDinside said, adding that there were technological barriers such as heat dissipation.
Though TV manufacturers have set ambitious goals in LED TV output, LEDinside held a conservative view about the LED TV market because high-end LED TV sales would be limited by the global economic recession this year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts