AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the nation’s No. 2 LCD panel maker, said its solar cell manufacturing arm inaugurated a new plant yesterday with an ultimate annual capacity of 1.4 gigawatt high-efficiency solar cells.
In May, the Hsinchu-based panel maker unveiled its plan to form a US$700 million solar cell venture with SunPower Corp of Malaysia, completing the last piece of AUO’s involvement in the solar industry supply chain, after it invested in solar wafer manufacturing and solar system installation businesses.
The AUO-SunPower joint venture has produced 5 megawatts of solar cells since October, the companies said in a joint statement and the conversion rate reached 22.5 percent.
AUO expects to complete the construction of 18 production lines at the new solar cell plant by 2013. No information about the amount of the investment was disclosed.
“Malaysia’s investment in the AUO-SunPower joint venture — an excellent talent pool and a positive business investment climate — has given us the opportunity to significantly expand solar cell production that will meet the demand for solar worldwide, which has grown nearly eight-fold over the past four years. We appreciate our partnership with the Malaysian government,” SunPower chief executive Tom Werner said in a statement.
Next year, installation of solar panels is expected to grow 14 percent to 15.43 gigawatts from 13.53 gigawatts this year, Taipei-based researcher TrendForce Technology Corp (集邦科技) said.
However, supply is expected to grow beyond demand by between 20 gigawatts and 25 gigawatts, increasing concern of a supply glut, TrendForce said in a report released on Tuesday.
Separately, AUO said that as of the end of last month, it had 7,400 patents registered globally, which has given the company an upper hand in winning patent lawsuits. The company said that as of the end of last month, it had filed 15,000 patent applications.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group