Wintek Corp (勝華), which supplies touch panels to Apple Inc and Nokia Corp, yesterday expressed optimism over its prospects in the second half of the year, given growing demand and rising shipments of its new high-margin touch panels used in tablet devices.
Taichung-based Wintek, which mainly supplies 3.5-inch and smaller screens for mobile phones, this year expanded into larger 10-inch touch screens used for tablet devices such as Apple’s popular iPad.
“We believe the company’s performance in the second half will be better than in the first half because of rising demand for small and medium-sized touch panels,” company spokesman James Chen (陳政慧) said by telephone.
“Medium-sized touch panels deliver higher margins, and growth this year will be significant because mass adoption of larger touch panels for electronics is just taking off,” Chen said.
Last month, touch panels made up more than 50 percent of Wintek’s total sales of NT$4.73 billion, Chen said.
That represented an increase from a 35 percent share in the first quarter of this year.
“Some of our customers have announced their plans to roll out new products — mainly tablet PCs that are outfitted with bigger-sized touch panels,” Chen said.
To satisfy customer demand, Wintek plans to expand capacity at a Chinese plant, raising production by 3 million units of 10-inch touch panels a month by the end of next quarter, from about 600,000 units at present, Chen said.
Wintek’s operations should also improve as the global economic recovery spurs spending on consumer electronics, he said.
However, he declined to answer when asked whether the company would turn around by the end of this year.
As of the first quarter, the panel supplier has booked 11 consecutive quarters of losses.
Macquarie Securities said Wintek received new orders from Apple to supply touch panels used in the new iPhone 4, but that would not help the company return to profit this year, citing limited contribution from this business, according to a report dated June 9 — two days after Apple unveiled the latest addition to its iPhone family.
Macquarie expected revenues from the iPhone series to make up between 15 percent and 20 percent of Wintek’s total revenues this year.
Last year, Wintek’s losses expanded to NT$2.62 billion, compared with losses of NT$2.39 billion in 2008.
Shares of Wintek were unchanged at NT$24.80 yesterday.
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