AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the world's third-largest maker of flat-panel displays used in electronic products, said it will start equipping a new factory this year that will more than double its output of screens for televisions next year.
Expansion of a second factory that makes so-called fifth-generation glass plates from which the displays are made will begin in the second half, the company said. AU Optronics said it can cut up to six panels for 26-inch TV screens from one plate.
"We will make more investment for generation five," company president Chen Hsuan-bin (陳炫彬) said at a technology conference.
AU Optronics plans to boost spending for expansion this year to about US$1 billion from US$460 million last year to tap a growing market for flat TVs. AU Optronics' budget would match that of Japan's Sharp Corp, the world's largest maker of the TVs.
AU Optronics and Sharp are trying to catch up with LG.Philips LCD and Samsung Electronics Co of South Korea, the world's largest screen suppliers, which last year became the first to open fifth-generation plants.
Sharp, the first company that's building a so-called sixth-generation plant, will be the biggest spender this year with a US$1 billion budget, according to market researcher DisplaySearch.
Flat-panel display makers worldwide will raise their investment in manufacturing equipment by 24 percent to US$6.4 billion this year in a race to cut production costs and make larger TV-sized panels, DisplaySearch said.
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