The nation’s two largest LCD panel makers, Innolux Corp (群創光電) and AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), yesterday reported monthly declines in revenue of about 10 percent for last month, as slackened demand curtailed shipment of TVs and PCs in the slow season.
Innolux’s revenue shrank 9 percent to NT$24.87 billion last month, compared with NT$27.37 billion in January, hitting its weakest level in four years, while AUO’s revenue dropped 10.8 percent to NT$28.18 billion from NT$31.6 billion, its lowest level in a year.
Innolux saw its shipments of PC and TV panels fall 10.8 percent to 8.94 million units last month from a month ago, compared with a monthly decline of 6 percent to 9.19 million units at AUO.
The firms expected shipments of PC and TV panels to slip by between a high-single-digit and a low-teens percentage for this quarter, citing seasonally weak demand.
Market researcher NPD DisplaySearch said on Monday that TV panel prices continued a downward spiral in the first half of this month due to excessive supply.
The prices of mainstream 32-inch TV panels fell 1 percent to US$76 per unit in the first two weeks of this month from two weeks ago, NPD DisplaySearch said.
Since the beginning of the year, the price of 32-inch TV panels has declined more than 6 percent, the researcher’s statistics showed.
Global major flat-panel makers reduced their equipment loading rates last month to ease the supply glut, but they are also considering boosting factory usage this month to cope with expected inventory replenishment demand from Chinese TV makers before China’s Labor Day shopping season in May, the US researcher said.
HannStar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶), focused on small and medium-sized LCD panels, reported that revenue fell 6.7 percent month-on-month to NT$1.76 billion last month from NT$1.87 billion, while Chunghwa Picture Tubes Co (中華映管) saw revenue rise 1.4 percent to NT$4.67 billion last month, compared with 4.61 billion in January.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day