Taimide Technology Inc (達邁科技) yesterday launched a new production line in Miaoli County, boosting its polyimide (PI) film capacity by 40 percent as it targets the growing demand for 5G foldable smartphones.
Taimide spent NT$1.8 billion (US$58.8 million), its biggest ever investment, building a new production line in Tongluo Industrial Park (銅鑼園區), as well as a research-and-development center.
The new production line is to add 600 tonnes of PI film to the company’s existing capacity of 1,500 tonnes a year, helping fuel revenue growth momentum, a Hsinchu Science Park Administration statement said.
Photo: Cho Yi-chun, Taipei Times
Fifteen companies have invested NT$112.61 billion to set up factories in the industrial park, which is part of the Hsinchu Science Park, the administration said.
About 65 percent of the PI film produced by Taimide is used to make flexible printed circuit boards that are used in a wide range of electronic products such as smartphones, wearable devices and laptops, as well as the automotive sector, the company said.
The company has developed a new optical-level colorless PI film that can be used in flexible OLED displays for foldable smartphones and other flexible displays, it said.
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Samsung Electronics Co have taken the lead in rolling out foldable smartphones this year and other handset brands are expected to follow suit, Taimide chairman Wu Sheng-chang (吳聲昌) said.
Taimide expects 5G smartphones to be a new growth driver for its revenue, Wu said.
The company has previously said that high-end smartphones consume 20 to 30 percent more PI film than mid to low-end smartphones.
Taimide expects to return to revenue growth next year as it benefits from the increased capacity and a broader product portfolio, the Central News Agency reported.
Taimide posted revenue of NT$1.33 billion in the first nine months of this year, down 24.7 percent from NT$1.77 billion in the same period last year.
The company attributed the decline to a prolonged US-China trade dispute, which has curtailed the sales of smartphones and other electronic products.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by