Touch-panel maker Wintek Corp (勝華科技) yesterday reported its weakest monthly revenue in three years because of a shortage of display panels for smartphones.
Revenue plummeted 27 percent to NT$4.39 billion (US$145 million) last month, compared with May’s NT$6.01 billion, and was the lowest since May 2010.
On an annual basis, sales declined 16 percent from NT$5.23 billion.
That brought Wintek’s revenue last quarter to NT$17.4 billion, down 6.85 percent from NT$18.68 billion in the first three months of the year.
“There was a significant shortfall in display supply, so we were not able to fully satisfy orders from smartphone customers,” Wintek spokesman Jay Huang (黃忠傑) said by telephone.
The supply constraint resulted in a revenue shortfall of about NT$800 million to NT$900 million last month, Huang said.
Wintek makes touch panels by combining touch sensors, which are manufactured at its factories, with display arrays purchased from flat-panel makers.
Demand for the company’s new touch screens for tablets was also not strong, with only a few clients launching new models, Huang said.
Wintek, a supplier of touch panels for Google Inc’s Nexus tablets, was hoping tablet touch screens would be its new major revenue growth driver.
Huang nonetheless remains positive about the company’s prospects.
“Revenue will rise in the third quarter,” he said. “The supply constraint will gradually ease and demand will pick up.”
However, Taiwanese flat-panel manufacturers Innolux Corp (群創光電) and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Co (中華映管) have said that supply of displays used in smartphones and tablets would continue to be tight in the second half of this year because of strong demand.
NPD DisplaySearch forecast that global smartphone shipments would grow to 930 million units and tablet shipments would increase to 250 million units this year.
In other news, TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), which supplies touch panels to Apple Inc, is scheduled to release its sales report today.
The company expects revenue to have shrunk by 10 to 15 percent sequentially last quarter from the first quarter’s NT$42.43 billion, citing slow demand from smartphone clients.
TPK and Wintek shares tumbled 5.74 percent and 3.76 percent to NT$460 and NT$12.80 respectively yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX, which dropped 1.3 percent, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
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