Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) yesterday announced plans to form a joint venture with the nation’s biggest touch panel maker, Young Fast Optoelectronics Co (洋華), to produce touch panel modules in China and tap into this rapidly growing market.
The two companies plan to pour US$100 million into the new venture, which will be 65 percent owned by Lite-On’s subsidiary — the world’s biggest handset casing maker, Lite-On Mobile Pte Ltd, which Lite-On acquired in 2007 from Perlos.
Nokia is Lite-On Mobile’s biggest customer.
The joint venture could help the companies further cement their leading position in the handset supply chain, as touch panels increasingly become a “must-have” feature on smartphones.
“The synergy of joining Lite-On Mobile and Young Fast is evident,” Lite-On Mobile chief executive Cor Saris said in a joint statement.
“We’re combining Young Fast’s world-class touch sensor technology with Lite-On Mobile’s proven expertise in seamless design ... Together we can offer the best integrated touch solutions to our global clients,” Saris said.
Young Fast will take a 35 percent share in the joint venture — the second one announced by the panel maker in one and half months after saying it planned to set up a venture with local disc maker Ritek Corp (錸德) through Ritek’s subsidiaries AimCore Technology Co (安可光電) and RiTdisplay Corp (錸寶).
“An important trend in the touch industry is integration of touch sensors into the window lens and ultimately into the handset’s front cover,” Young Fast chief executive TJ Lin (林德錚) said in the statement.
Lite-On Mobile will incorporate touch modules into its product and service portfolio in addition to its core offerings in plastics and metal casing, antenna and module sub-assembly, according to the statement.
Young Fast could expand its market share by leveraging off Lite-On Mobile’s customer base.
The joint venture is scheduled to start operation in the fourth quarter of this year. The new company will assemble touch panel modules at a plant in Huizhou, Guangdong Province.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS