Several LED product suppliers, such as Delta Electronics Co (台達電), Chicony Power Technology Co (群光電能) and Lite-On Technology Corp (億光), have devoted an increasing amount of resources to penetrating the LED lighting market to lift their sales.
The director of Delta’s solid-state lighting division, Roland Chiang (江文興), said his company’s revenue from LED lighting grew by an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent last year on the back of strong demand for LED bulbs, tubes and lighting fixtures in the Europe, the US and Japan.
This year, Chiang said the company’s LED lighting division is likely to see sales double because of even stronger global demand.
Everlight’s LED lighting sales were better than expected in the fourth quarter of last year due to strong demand from Europe and the US ahead of the Christmas holiday season, said Hsu Hsi-chuan (徐錫川), head of the company’s lighting research and development division.
The strong quarterly revenue also reflected rush orders from China, where buyers were eager to restock their inventories ahead of the peak Lunar New Year buying season next month.
Hsu said that judging from the orders the company has received, the LED lighting business is unlikely to feel the sales slowdown that the industry traditionally faces in the first quarter.
Everlight has forecast that its LED lighting sales will double this year and expects LED lighting to make up 15 percent to 20 percent of its total revenue this year, compared with about 10 percent last year, Hsu said.
Despite being a newcomer to the industry, Chicony Power said it has entered the supply chain of two or three major global buyers and expects to expand its shipments to other major clients after they certify its technology.
LED lighting sales are expected to account for 10 percent of the company’s total sales this year, compared with about 5 percent last year, Chicony Power said.
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
COLLABORATION: Taiwan and the US could jointly find solutions to weaknesses in supply chain resilience for critical materials, focusing on mining and initial refinement Taiwan is likely to purchase rare earths from the US in the future, and is also in talks with Australia and Canada to strengthen global rare earth supply chain security, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Taiwan and the US last month concluded the sixth Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, during which both sides signed a joint statement endorsing the principles of the Pax Silica Declaration, pledging to deepen cooperation in areas including critical minerals. At the time, Kung said the two sides would establish working groups to advance cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, critical materials and
RSS