Taiwanese companies in the touch panel industry are expected to see their revenues jump 36 percent as demand for touch screens may increase, a local market researcher said.
Local firms in the touch screen industry — primarily touch panel assemblers — may expand their revenues to a total of NT$31.84 billion (US$975 million) this year, from NT$23.41 billion last year, Taipei-based DRAMeXchange Technology Inc’s (集邦科技) latest report showed on Tuesday.
“The population of iPhones has led to more companies using touch screens on their smartphones. The release of Windows 7, in the fall at the earliest, will bring the business opportunity of selling more bigger-sized touch screens,” DRAMeXchange said in the report.
As Microsoft’s new operating system will feature multi-touch capabilities, a number of PC companies have unveiled PCs equipped with a touch screen and more are in the pipeline, the researcher said.
Hewlett Packard and Taiwan’s Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and many other companies plan to sell all-in-one PCs with touch screens, DRAMeXchange said.
As most of the world’s computers are made by Taiwanese companies, local companies in the touch panel industry as a whole may benefit from their close links to local PC companies and may have the chance to further expand revenues to NT$49.79 billion in 2012, at 16.9 percent composite annual growth rate, DRAMeXchange said.
Taiwan became the biggest touch panel exporter by shipments last year, a report by researcher DisplaySearch showed. Taiwan’s Young Fast Optoelectronics Co (洋華光電) and JTouch Corp (介面光電) grabbed the No. 2 and No. 5 positions, the report said.
Seeing the growing trend of using touch screens in computers and consumer electronics, many companies have expanded into the industry, including existing liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panel makers such as AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Wintek Corp (勝華). Wintek is widely speculated to be supplying touch panels to Apple, but has declined to confirm it.
Local touch panel makers are primarily making small-sized screens used in mobile devices including mobile phones and navigation devices. However, making big touch screens is a challenge because of technological barriers, DRAMeXchange said.
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