AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) has suspended production at a plant, which makes polysilicon used in solar wafer manufacturing, in Japan and is assessing potential quake damage to supply chains in the LCD panel industry, the company said.
The Hsinchu-based company said in a statement on Saturday that its manufacturing facilities had not been damaged and there had been no casualties at its Japanese solar-wafer unit, M.Setek Co, in Fukushima Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the magnitude 8.9 earthquake on Friday.
M.Setek produces polysilicon and solar wafers in Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture, both of which are key raw materials for making solar cells. AUO has in recent years expanded into the solar power business, aiming to gain a foothold in the fast-growing green energy market.
AUO has about 800 employees in Japan, with about 700 working at M.Setek, chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) said yesterday on the sidelines of a job fair in Taipei.
“The [M.Setek] plant was not hit by the tsunami, but ... because of a lack of water and electricity, it is not operational at the moment,” local cable TV network UBN quoted Lee as saying yesterday.
The company downplayed the potential financial impact from the production suspension, adding that M.Setek contributed just 0.3 percent of AUO’s NT$102.62 billion consolidated revenue in the fourth quarter of last year.
As for the possible knock-on effect on the LCD panel industry, Lee said there would certainly be an impact in terms of the upstream supply chain, but that an accurate assessment would require more time.
“We have alternative sources of chemical materials,” Lee said, hinting that the earthquake has had a limited impact on the company’s flat-panel business.
US market researcher IHS iSuppli said on Friday that the earthquake would affect the production of components for LCD panels — including glass, color filters, polarizers, cold cathode fluorescent lamps and light-emitting diodes — as Japanese suppliers play an important role in this line of business.
Meanwhile, Lee said yesterday the company would re-apply to the Investment Commission for permission to change its Chinese investment plan, after the government announced on March 8 that it would allow Taiwanese LCD makers to buy a stake in or merge with Chinese counterparts, as well as invest in Chinese fabs using the same level of technology they currently employ in Taiwan.
In December, the company won government approval to invest US$3 billion in a 7.5-generation fab in Kunshan, China.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHEN MEI-YING
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
RSS