TPK Holding Co Ltd (宸鴻) yesterday said it had signed an agreement with Japan’s Nissha Printing Co Ltd to form a strategic partnership in an effort to accelerate its entry into the mid-range touch-panel market.
TPK’s announcement came as it is facing mounting pressure from industry changes as demand shifts to medium-range and low-cost smartphones and tablets from high-end models, and competition intensifies.
TPK counts Apple Inc as its top touch panel client.
Nissha Printing will invest US$6.25 million for a 25 percent stake in TPK’s touch-panel subsidiary, TPK Film Solutions Ltd, which is developing next-generation silver nanowire technology to make low-cost touch screens for smartphones and tablets.
TPK will hold a 65 percent stake in TPK Film after injects NT$4 million (US$135,400) in new capital into the subsidiary, while Sunnyvale, California-based Cambrios Technologies Corp will own 10 percent.
“TPK has been focusing on developing high-end glass touch panels, this partnership with Nissha Printing will help us broaden our product portfolio and tap into middle-range film touch panel area,” chief financial executive Freddie Liu (劉詩亮) told a teleconference.
“The new 5-inch, or 6-inch silver nanowire touch screens will be very [cost] competitive,” Liu sad.
The new nano silverwire technology will help clients lower their costs by 10 percent to 20 percent if they switch to the new touch screens from existing ITO glass touch panels, TPK said.
Liu said the new touch panels will help it secure more orders from China without scarifying gross margin. Gross margin for silver nanowire touch panels will approach to TPK’s corporate average figure.
Last year, TPK’s gross margin stood at 17.05 percent.
TPK chief executive David Sun (孫大明) said in August that the company was facing a new challenge resulting from the proliferation of low-cost mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
The company, aiming to recoup lost market share of handset touch screens, has been concentrating on developing low-cost one-glass-solution touch panels for notebook computers, but demand for touch-enabled laptops fell short of expectation.
TPK Film will ramp up production of silver nanowire touch panels in the second quarter next year, with a monthly capacity of 2 million units of 6-inch silver nanowire touch panels.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares yesterday notched their best two-day rally on record, as investors flock to the Taiwanese chip designer on excitement over its tie-up with Google. The Taipei-listed stock jumped 8.59 percent, capping a two-session surge of 19 percent and closing at a fresh all-time high of NT$1,770. That extended a two-month rally on growing awareness of MediaTek’s work on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), which are chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It also highlights how fund managers faced with single-stock limits on their holding of market titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are diversifying into other AI-related firms.
RSS