Apple Inc is expected to crank out a small volume of next-generation Micro-LED displays from a plant in Taoyuan by the end of this year for its wearable devices, an IDC analyst said yesterday.
The US technology giant is forecast to begin mass production of Micro-LED displays at the plant in Longtan District (龍潭) next year, ahead of rival display makers, IDC analyst Annabelle Hsu (徐美雯) said.
Apple might initially use the brighter, more energy efficient and foldable Micro-LED displays on new Apple Watches, Hsu said.
The company has kept a low profile about the Longtan display factory since it began operations two years ago. The Hsinchu Science Park Bureau in 2015 confirmed the presence of the Apple plant, without elaborating.
Apple has placed more focus on Micro-LED technology after acquiring LuxVue Technology Corp in 2014.
The newest self-emitting display technology shares traits with expensive organic LED (OLED) technology, but costs less.
“Many display makers consider Micro-LED technology a panacea for making flexible displays due to lower technological barriers, compared with OLED technology,” Hsu said. “Flexible display technologies are seen as the possible driving force to developments in end products in the next decade.”
However, Hsu does not expect Micro-LED technology to become commercially available before 2020.
Innolux Corp (群創), a Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) flat-panel manufacturing subsidiary, has allocated resources to explore Micro-LED technology, but has not yet released any details.
Samsung Electronics Co is the only company in the world capable of supplying OLED panels for mobile phones at present, while LG Display Inc and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) are mostly making smaller-sized OLED displays used in wearable devices, Hsu said.
APPLE PAY CONCERNS
In other news, the launch on Wednesday of Apple Pay in Taiwan has raised concerns about the possibility of declining credit card fee income for local banks, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing an industry insider.
The newspaper said Apple would soon be joining issuing banks and network operators such as Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc in taking a slice of the profits from transaction fees.
“Apple Pay operates in existing transaction markets wherever credit cards are accepted; it is not a new segment and it does not make the pie bigger for issuer banks,” the newspaper quoted a bank manager, who wished to remain unidentified, as saying.
Apple Pay is not expected to catalyze significant growth in the local market for credit card transactions, but the new service would take its 0.0015 percent cut of transactions made with the mobile wallet, the manager said.
Compared with conventional credit cards, banks collect lower fees when purchases are made with Apple Pay, and fee income would decline more rapidly if the mobile wallet gains popularity, the manager said.
Market observers have said that the payment service, which is only available for Apple’s newer smartphones, trails behind that of the rival Android operating system.
Samsung, an Android smartphone maker, commands 24.6 percent of Taiwan’s smartphone market, compared with Apple’s 18.7 percent, market statistics showed.
Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), the nation’s leading credit card issuer with 4.2 million active cards as of the end of last month and NT$392.9 billion (US$12.96 billion) total transactions last year, reported that credit card had contributed NT$5.7 billion out of the NT$18.4 billion in overall fee income that the bank earned last year.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEW PRODUCTS: MediaTek plans to roll out new products this quarter, including a flagship mobile phone chip and a GB10 chip that it is codeveloping with Nvidia Corp MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday projected that revenue this quarter would dip by 7 to 13 percent to between NT$130.1 billion and NT$140 billion (US$4.38 billion and US$4.71 billion), compared with NT$150.37 billion last quarter, which it attributed to subdued front-loading demand and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said that the forecast factored in the negative effects of an estimated 6 percent appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the greenback. “As some demand has been pulled into the first half of the year and resulted in a different quarterly pattern, we expect the third quarter revenue to decline sequentially,”
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing service provider, yesterday said it would boost equipment capital expenditure by up to 16 percent for this year to cope with strong customer demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Aside from AI, a growing demand for semiconductors used in the automotive and industrial sectors is to drive ASE’s capacity next year, the Kaohsiung-based company said. “We do see the disparity between AI and other general sectors, and that pretty much aligns the scenario in the first half of this year,” ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told an
RSS