Apple Inc is planning to expand its investment in Taiwan by building a new plant in the Longtan (龍潭) section of Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), the Hsinchu Science Park Bureau said yesterday.
The administration on Feb. 18 approved a plan by Apple’s Taiwan branch to set up a new plant in Longtan, Taoyuan, where the US firm has its existing operations, according to company registration data obtained by the Central News Agency.
Chang Shih-chang (張世昌), a former executive at TPO Displays Corp (統寶光電), is expected to take charge of the new Apple plant.
TPO Displays was acquired by panel maker Innolux Corp (群創光電) in 2010.
Sources with knowledge of the plan said that the new plant would be built on a 30.83 hectare plot as part of the second phase of the Longtan section of the park.
While sources at the administration declined to disclose any financial terms or details about the plan, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday reported that the investment is expected to be about NT$10 billion (US$334.9 million).
The report said that the initial phase of the plan is to boost next-generation monitor production, as well as research and development (R&D) of monitor technologies.
The US firm is developing low-temperature polysilicon displays and metal-oxide-semiconductor screens at the park, along with quantum film image sensors, sources at the science park said.
The report cited unnamed sources as saying that the plant has been listed as a major project by Apple and that the US company has dispatched an R&D team to Taiwan to facilitate the investment.
Apple is planning to collaborate with LED lighting maker Epistar Corp (晶電) and panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) on monitor development to reduce the US company’s dependence on Japanese and South Korean suppliers, the report said.
Apple has been running a laboratory in Longtan since 2014 and with the new investment, the company is aiming to produce mini-LED and micro-LED displays, it said.
The Longtan plant is expected to become Apple’s third overseas R&D hub after Japan and South Korea, it added.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
RSS