Prime View International Co's (元太科技) stock jumped close to its 7 percent daily limit after the flat-panel maker said it was supplying flat-panel displays for the world's top Internet retailer's newly launched electronic book reader.
Amazom.com Inc's US$399 e-book reader, or Kindle, allows users to download books, magazines and newspapers using mobile EVDO technology, competing with Sony Corp's Sony Reader. Amazon's Kindle can hold about 200 book titles.
The stock price of Prime View advanced NT$2.85, or 6.88 percent, to close at NT$44.25 on the GRETAI Securities Market yesterday, surpassing the broader market's 0.72 percent rise.
The stock prices of other domestic flat-panel makers, including top player AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), rose between 2.79 percent and 6.24 percent.
"Benefiting from the growing number of electronic readers, Prime View's business will grow further in the fourth quarter and next year," Prime View chairman Scott Liu (
Prime View, the world's sole maker of six-inch flexible displays, is also a supplier for Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony's electronic book readers.
The company said in the middle of last month that it would start shipping similar flexible displays to several new customers this quarter.
The growth would be a boost to Prime View's revenues and profits next year, Liu said.
Sales of e-book readers are expected to expand by a compounded annual growth rate of 10.5 percent to 4.2 million units in 2011, from 2.8 million units this year, local market researcher Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) said yesterday.
ITRI cautioned, however, that the flexible display market could account for only 3 percent of a total of US$196 billion in revenues of flat panel makers in 2015.
"The market is quite limited," ITRI said.
Flexible displays make up less than 10 percent of Prime View's total revenues. A majority of the firm's revenues come from liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels for mobile phones, consumer electronics and marine navigation devices.
The flexible displays are gray-scale, but Prime View said it planned to churn out color flexible displays next year. The company is also developing flexible displays for use in electronic labels, sub-screens on computers and for electronic dictionaries.
Prime View said that pre-tax profits in the first three quarters of the year jumped five-fold to NT$905 million (US$28 million), aided in part by better product prices and strong demand for panels for cellphones and digital photo frames.
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
RSS