Touch solution provider TPK Holding Co (宸鴻) yesterday said that silver-nanowire (SNW) technology should contribute about 5 percent to overall revenue next year, aided in part by rising shipments of interactive whiteboards.
TPK started investing in the technology in 2004 in collaboration with US subsidiary Cambrios Technologies Corp and recently commercialized the technology.
The flexible nature of SNW films makes it ideal for emerging devices such as flexible, foldable and stretchable phones and tablets, TPK said.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
The interactive whiteboard is its first SNW commercial product, it said.
“We have started shipping several thousands of SNW interactive whiteboards. We hope the volume would increase to 10,000 a month before the end of the year,” TPK chief executive Leo Hsieh (謝立群) said at the firm’s exhibition booth at the Touch Taiwan display show in Taipei’s Nangang Exhibition Center.
The company is exhibiting a series of SNW products at the show, which ends today.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
SNW technology is an affordable replacement for indium tin oxide, which is commonly used in touch sensors, interactive signboards, public signage and touch TVs, it said.
To satisfy customer demand, TPK plans to double monthly capacity of 75-inch SNW touch modules to 20,000 units before the end of the year and to 40,000 units next year, Hsieh said.
Interactive whiteboards are mainly used to replace traditional blackboards at schools in China, the US and Europe, Hsieh said.
TPK has secured orders to supply SNW touch modules to Shiyuan Electronic Technology Co (視源), China’s biggest whiteboard vendor, he said.
Several enterprises have also installed the interactive whiteboards in their conference rooms, he said.
Additionally, the company is in talks with several smartphone vendors, mainly from China, to supply 7.2-inch SNW touch modules for foldable phones, Hsieh said.
TPK will be ready with flexible SNW touch modules next quarter for clients to ship new models, he said.
“Foldable phone shipments will be small next year, as the market is still in the budding stage,” Hsieh said.
It will take a longer time to apply flexible SNW touch technology to tablets and laptops, as manufacturers in the supply chain will have to overcome several challenges, TPK said.
The company is optimistic about its business outlook for the second half of the year, expecting revenue to grow annually this quarter, backed by an uptick in seasonal demand, Hsieh said.
Order visibility for the fourth quarter is vague, but customers have indicated that revenue is not likely to dip from a year earlier, he said.
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