Japan Display Inc, the world’s largest provider of LCD screens for smartphones and tablet computers, is planning to establish a subsidiary in Taiwan, eyeing the country’s geographical proximity to the rapidly growing market in China.
The company has hired former Innolux Corp (群創) vice president Jeff Hsu (許庭禎) to set up Taiwan Display Inc, which will have paid-in capital of NT$30 million (US$1 million) and is scheduled to start operating by the end of the year, a company statement said.
“Hsu is an expert with extensive knowledge and experience in this market, and we are excited to fully leverage his management expertise,” Japan Display said in the statement.
The Tokyo-based company said the wholly-owned Taiwanese unit will be run mainly by management staff from Taiwan and China. The venture will focus on small and medium-sized LCD panels, with technologies supported by Japan Display’s low-temperature polysilicon and in-cell touch panel solutions, it added.
Japan Display was formed last year through a merger of Hitachi Ltd, Toshiba Corp and Sony Corp’s LCD units.
The company’s share of the global market for small and medium-sized LCD panels was 16.6 percent last year, followed by Sharp Corp’s 14.8 percent and LG Display Co’s 13.5 percent, according to market advisory firm NPD DisplaySearch.
As the smartphone penetration rate remains low in China, it offers a lot more room for future growth and Chinese vendors are thus becoming increasingly important to handset components suppliers like Japan Display, which also supplies LCD screens for Apple Inc’s new iPhone 5S and 5C as well as for Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle Fire e-reader and Google Inc’s Nexus 7 tablet.
Based on Gartner Inc’s statistics, China’s Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), ZTE Corp (中興) and Huawei Technologies Co (華為) ranked the fourth, fifth and sixth-largest smartphone vendors in the world in the second quarter of this year.
These three firms have seen their market share expand to 4.7 percent, 4.3 percent and 4.2 percent respectively in the second quarter this year from almost zero in the second half of 2010, Gartner said.
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