Chinese TV maker Sichuan Changhong Electric Co Ltd (四川長虹集團) yesterday signed agreements to buy US$800m in TV panels from top Taiwanese flat-panel suppliers AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) and Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子).
That is the latest order placed with local LCD panel makers by a major Chinese TV maker. In January, TCL Corp (TCL 集團) and Haier Co (海爾) inked letters of intent to purchase US$5.3 billion in flat panels, up 20 percent from US$4.4 billion in orders made last year.
“We will buy US$800 million worth of flat panels. That will [supply our need] for the next year-and-a-half,” Sichuan Changhong chairman Zhao Yong (趙勇) told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of the signing ceremony in Taipei yesterday.
AUO is the biggest LCD TV panel supplier for Sichuan Changhong, followed by Chimei Innolux and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, Zhao said.
Last year, AUO and Sichuan Changhong invested 100 million yuan (US$14.65 million) to set up a joint venture to assemble TV and PC panel modules in China’s Sichuan Province.
Yesterday’s signing ceremony was arranged by Taiwan External Trade Development Council (外貿協會), a quasi-government agency that has been focusing on promoting closer trade between Taiwan and China.
Sichuan Changhong “should aim to secure flat panel supplies in the second half of this year as supply is expected to be tight,” said Corwin Lee (李秋緯), an LCD panel industry analyst with Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所).
Panel demand from Chinese TV manufacturers recently slowed, as they were digesting excessive inventories, which stemmed from weaker-than-expected TV sales during the Lunar New Year and Labor Day holidays, Lee said.
The days of inventory on Chinese TV makers were one week higher than the normal level at about 4 weeks, Lee said.
In related news, AUO, the nation’s No. 2 LCD panel maker, yesterday said it planned to invest as much as HK$90 million (US$11.5 million) for a 15 percent stake in Hong-Kong-based LCD technology developer Ahead Investment Ltd (深圳超多維光電子有限公司), according to its filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The acquisition would help boost its 3D technological capabilities, company spokeswoman Hsiao Ya-wen (蕭雅文) said by telephone.
The investment would be made gradually via AUO’s subsidiaries.
Shares of AUO rallied 2.5 percent to NT$30.8, outperforming the benchmark TAIEX, which gained 1.17 percent yesterday. The stock price of Chimei Innolux rose 1.1 percent to NT$36.15.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS