LCD panelmaker Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (CPT, 中華映管) yesterday showcased a series of new automotive displays, including some with advanced miniLED backlights, in an effort to boost sales of displays that deliver higher margins and longer product lifecycles.
The Taoyuan-based company has identified automotive displays as its key growth driver amid a downturn in smartphone display shipments as growth of unit sales diminishes worldwide.
The automotive display market “is to grow fast, at a double-digit percent rate each year over next few years” by unit shipment, CPT president Lin Sheng-chang (林盛昌) told reporters on the sidelines of the Touch Taiwan Display International Exhibition at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.
Vehicles come equipped with three to five displays, two on the headrests for back-seat passengers, one cluster display, one on the dashboard and a heads-up display, Lin said.
“There will be more and bigger displays in automobiles as electric and autonomous cars advance,” Lin said, adding that more displays will be needed to show key indicators, such as tire pressure, to add safety.
CPT makes 15.2 inch displays for electric cars, as well as standard 8 inch flat screens for other vehicles, Lin said.
The company, which supplies automotive displays to Mercedes-Benz and BMW, as well as several Japanese brands, sets a goal of shipping 14 million automotive displays this year and 15 million units next year, from 12 million units last year, he said.
That would help boost sales of displays, which made up 40 percent of CPT’s revenue this year, Lin said, adding that the figure could climb to 50 percent next year.
Smartphone displays will account for 60 percent of the company’s revenue this year, he said.
To increase sales of automotive displays, CPT has invested heavily in to develop new technologies, such as miniLED technology, which was on display at the exhibition, with units starting at 13 inches.
The company’s new 25 inch display, equipped with a miniLED backlight, has a good chance of being commercialized soon as a substitute for OLED models, as it is competitively priced and has a similar performance to the OLED models, Lin said.
“Our miniLED car display will only cost US$50 more than its LCD counterpart, which is more than affordable,” Lin said.
He declined to disclose when the miniLED display would reach the market.
The company expects smartphone display shipments to lose steam this quarter as mobile phone vendors prepare for launches of new models outfitted with notch screens, such as Apple Inc’s iPhone X series, or water-drop screens, Lin said.
CPT is to ship its first water-drop screens for a global smartphone brand next month, he said.
“During the product transition period, our smartphone display business will experience a brief time of pain in the third quarter before a pick-up in the fourth,” Lin said.
For the entirety of this year, CPT expects to ship between 140 million and 150 million smartphone displays, sliding slightly from last year, he said.
The company also plans to tap into the rapidly growing electronic tags market, where E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技) has a dominant market position, Lin said.
He declined to disclose details.
CPT plans to ship its first electronic tags, such as electronic shelf labels, by the end of the year, using LCD displays and e-paper displays, he said.
The company also plans to ship displays for e-readers, he said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS