Prime View International Co (PVI, 元太科技) yesterday said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (CMO, 奇美電子) to secure sufficient supply of flat panels for its electronic readers.
Prime View, which supplies electronic paper displays to Amazon Inc and Sony Corp, said it has the full support of Chi Mei’s fifth-generation (5G) plant to help it expand its e-paper business, the company said in a joint statement with CMO.
“Support from CMO’s 5G production line will enable PVI to provide more cost-competitive products to customers in the face of rapid demand growth in the e-paper market,” Prime View chairman Scott Liu (劉思誠) said.
“The mutual collaboration is not only advantageous but also complementary, bringing with it a synergy that is greater than just the alliance of two parties,” he said in the statement.
The demand for electronic paper displays has surged in recent months because of a strong push by Amazon and Sony into the electronic reader market, as well as rising environmental awareness.
The Taipei-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所) expects worldwide e-reader shipment volume to reach 3.05 million units this year and reach 19.76 million units in 2013.
Another market researcher, NextGen, estimated that the global e-paper reading device market would post a compounded annual growth rate of 124 percent from last year to US$2.5 billion by 2013.
Chi Mei said it expected the collaboration with Prime View to facilitate its entry into the fast-developing electronic paper business.
“We are delighted to work with PVI to provide the most mature e-paper solution in the market. Through the collaboration, not only can CMO expand its presence in the e-paper industry, but its 5G production line will also have a wider range of applications, enhancing its efficiency in capacity allocation,” Chi Mei chairman Frank Liao (廖錦祥) said in the statement.
Prime View’s new partnership with Chi Mei came one day after the company, also a leading maker of smaller flat screens for portable devices, said on Wednesday it would sweeten the terms of its planned acquisition of E Ink Corp to secure the US company’s electronic paper display technologies.
Last year, Prime View acquired South Korean panel maker BOE-Hydis Technology Co to secure production capacity, which was four times larger than its own at the time.
BOE-Hydis mainly manufactures liquid-crystal-display panels for notebook computers.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS