Wellypower Optronics Corp (威力盟), a back-light arm of local flat-panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), launched a new generation of fluorescent lamps yesterday.
Wellypower, the world’s biggest cold-cathode-fluorescent lamp maker (CCFL) maker by shipments, began diversifying into the field of energy-efficient lamps, including fluorescent and LED lamps, in recent years to cope with the reduction in the use of CCFLs in LCD panels used in PCs and TVs.
“The gross margins for energy-efficient lamps will catch up with back-light products after reaching economic scale,” Wellypower spokesman Tony Chang (張孜多) said on the sidelines of a press conference about the high-efficient fluorescent T5 lamps. “Fewer LED companies are capable of entering this market.”
The company set up a special lighting task force two years ago.
Chang said that the lighting business will account for 5 percent of the firm’s total revenues this year, and will expand to make up a double-digit percent of next year’s revenues, by expanding to the Chinese market and more Southeastern Asian countries.
Wellypower also makes other environmentally friendly lighting products, including LED lamp tubes and bulbs and CCFL spiral bulbs.
The LED business is now at the core of the Hsinchu-based company.
LEDs made up more than 50 percent of Wellypower’s total revenues of NT$2.26 billion (US$73.44 million) in the third quarter.
“We start making profits from the LED business in the third quarter. It is no longer a drag on other display products,” Chang said.
The company is scheduled to release its detailed financial figures of the third quarter on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, company officials said there was some uncertainty about third-quarter sales.
“We are not clear about [customer demand] in November and December,” said Louis Lu (盧金鈺), an associate vice president of Wellypower.
Citing information from customers, Lu said the penetration of LED-back-light TVs globally has lagged behind the 40-percent target set by most TV makers earlier this year.
LED TVs will account for just 20 percent of the world’s LCD TVs, Lu said. However, the company’s customers plan to launch big promotions in the first quarter of next year to boost the penetration rate to 30 percent, he said.
To cope with growing demand, Wellypower plans to expand its LED packaging capacity by 66 percent, from 120 million units a month to 200 million units a month next year, Chang said.
More than 50 percent of LCD TV shipments will be based on LED backlight technology next year, compared to 20 percent this year, as the cost premium reduces quickly and manufacturers continue to transition their LCD TV lineups away from older CCFL technology, Texas-Based research firm DisplaySearch said last week.
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
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