Taiwanese television maker Sampo Corp (
Sampo is well known for its plasma-display-panel (PDP) TVs, but the company said it is trying to build a greater presence in the LCD TV market to cope with shrinking demand for PDP TVs.
"The shipment growth is mainly driven by LCD TV demand," Sampo president Afuna Chen (陳瑞勳) said on the sidelines of a press conference unveiling the company's new products, including a 58-inch PDP TV and a 32-inch LCD TV using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as its back light source.
LCD TV sales are expected to expand 54 percent annually to 66 million units next year, while PDP TVs would grow 30 percent to 13 million units, market researcher DisplaySearch said.
"We recently started shipping LCD TVs for Sharp and we will have a new customer next year, a major US channel brand," Chen said.
He declined to comment on whether Best Buy Co, a leading US consumer electronics retailer, would be a potential customer for Sampo.
Shipment of flat-panel TVs including PDP and LCD TVs would expand to 300,000 sets from 250,000 sets estimated for this year, Chen said.
Sampo is supplying 32-inch and 37-inch LCD TVs under the brand AQUOS for Sharp to meet local demand, Chen said. He said the volume would initially be small, but would expand gradually to exceed 10,000 units next year.
"Sharp is unable to match the voracious demand for its TVs around the world," Chen said. "We hope to create a win-win situation from this cooperation."
Sharp currently holds a 6 percent stake in Sampo, making it the biggest shareholder of the Taiwanese TV manufacturer.
Sampo also manufactures own-brand slim-screen TVs, refrigerators and other home appliances. The company posted a NT$1.1 billion net loss during the first nine months of this year because of losses from its computer monitor manufacturing arm Sampo Technology Corp (
Sampo Technology has been asked to stop trading on the nation's over-the-counter GRETAI Securities Market starting Dec. 25 after the company's net value fell into the red.
Sampo shares dropped 0.24 percent to NT$8.1 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, compared with a 0.4 percent gain on the main bourse.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS