Wintek Corp (勝華科技), one of Apple Inc’s touch-panel suppliers, yesterday said it has signed an agreement with HannsTouch Solution Inc (和鑫光電) to supply touch sensors in an effort to expand its touch-panel capacities for rapidly growing demand from notebook computers and Ultrabooks.
Earlier this year, Wintek said it was seeking partners to expand capacities of its one-glass-solution (OGS) touch panels by a double-digit percent this year from last year. The Taichung-based company considered the OGS touch screens a better substitute for expensive in-cell touch panels because of lower cost.
“HannsTouch’s supply of touch sensor [modules] will help us win more OGS orders from Ultrabooks and notebooks [segments],” Wintek spokesman Jay Huang (黃忠傑) said in a statement filed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
“We believe the collaboration will create a supplemental effect. We do not have to invest in building a new and expensive upstream [glass substrate] production line, nor take the risk of oversupply,” Huang said by telephone.
HannsTouch would manufacture touch-sensor modules at its special 5.3-generation factory at an optimal cost for laptop panels, compared with fourth-generation, or 4.5-generation, factories used by rivals to make laptop touch panels, Huang said.
“We expect the cooperation will help boost the penetration rate of OGS and increase businesses for both companies,” he said.
To cope with growing touch- panel demand from Ultrabooks, laptops and tablets as touch feature will be the best selling points of Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 system, Wintek is also aggressively expanding capacities at its factories in China and Vietnam this year.
Wintek said growth of OGS touch panels has accelerated. The growth in OGS touch panels have helped lifted Wintek’s revenue by more than 60 percent last month to NT$8.39 billion (US$280 million) from NT$5.22 billion in June.
The new touch screens are expected to make up a 25 percent share of the company’s total revenues this quarter, up from a 13 percent share in the second quarter when Wintek first shipped the product.
Wintek’s partnership with HannsTouch would also include touch panel-related technologies, patents and market expansion, according to the statement.
Wintek shares rallied 2.87 percent to NT$14.35 yesterday, while HannsTouch inched up 0.91 percent to NT$11.05, both outperforming the TAIEX’s 0.33 percent gain.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to