LCD panel maker Innolux Corp (群創) is accelerating its expansion into the higher-margin public information display sector in an effort to reduce earnings volatility.
“Public displays deliver higher gross margins than large-sized TV panels,” Devin Lin (林威廷), a sales manager at Innolux’s public information display division, said in a statement on Thursday.
Innolux is set to start mass production of public information displays in the middle of next year, it said.
The company is playing catch-up with local rival AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), which ventured into this market more than 10 years ago.
AUO in October said it is the world’s second-largest producer of public information displays, with a market share of 30 percent.
It expects annual shipments to outpace industry growth and expand by 50 percent year-on-year this year.
The market for public information displays is highly customized: Mainstream products range from 40 inches to 65 inches, with 55-inch and 65-inch models gaining the fastest traction, Innolux said.
It added that 65-inch displays with touch features have become the mainstay in Chinese, European and US commercial markets, and have been widely adopted by schools in eastern Europe.
Smaller public information displays, measuring 12 inches to 22 inches, have also shown strong growth momentum, as schools replace traditional billboards with LCDs and retailers use them in lieu of paper price tags or conventional signage, Innolux said.
Small-sized public information displays are growing at an annual rate of 100,000 units, the firm added.
Overall, the global public information display market grew at a double-digit percentage annually from 2015 to this year, statistics compiled by IHS Markit showed.
IHS attributed the increase to robust demand for video walls, interactive displays and price tags, supported by government stimulus measures.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained