Asahi Glass Co, Japan's largest glassmaker, will build a plant in central Japan to meet rising demand for material for large liquid crystal displays (LCDs).
The Tokyo-based company will invest ?14 billion (US$127 million) and increase its annual glass production capacity 22 percent to 22 million square meter, the company said in a press release.
The new plant will make the glass sheets used in flat panel television and computer displays beginning in October 2005.
Asahi Glass projects demand for LCD panels will grow 25 percent over the next few years.
"The demand for large glass sheets will continue to exceed supply as most manufacturers start production next year," said Yoshihiko Saito, an Asahi Glass spokesman.
Asahi Glass raised its net income forecast this month 7 percent to ?73 billion for the business year ending Dec. 31.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co and Japan's Sony Corp, the world's second-largest consumer electronics maker, teamed up last month to build a seventh-generation display plant that is to start production next year.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Hitachi Ltd, and Toshiba Corp, three of Japan's biggest electronics makers, are also in talks on joint manufacture of liquid crystal displays used in televisions to compete with their South Korean and Taiwanese rivals.
Global supply of liquid crystal displays for computers and televisions exceeded demand in the first half, El Segundo, California-based Isuppli Corp said in a quarterly report this month. Oversupply will widen to 9.3 percent in the third quarter as eight new plants come on line this year, Isuppli said.
Global sales of liquid crystal displays will increase 50 percent this year, less than forecast, because rising inventories are cutting the prices of flat televisions and computer monitors, the Austin, Texas-based market research company DisplaySearch said.
Global sales of LCDs measuring more than 10 inches diagonally will rise to US$36 billion, down from a prior prediction of US$41.3 billion this year, DisplaySearch said at its conference in Los Angeles. The industry had sales last year of US$24 billion.
Shares of LCD makers, such as the world's largest Samsung, have fallen in the past four months as investors worry that growth won't be as fast as expected. DisplaySearch said a 17-inch monitor that sold for US$459 to consumers in the second quarter could fall as low as US$299 to US$349 by this holiday season in the US.
"We did see dramatic price reductions in July and August," said Ross Young, chief executive of DisplaySearch. "The outlook is fairly grim for rest of year."
Prices for LCDs had increased because of shortages. That led manufacturers to increase inventories quickly, Young said. The buildup will cause manufacturers to cut back, and LCD shipments this year will increase to 136 million units, less than a prior forecast of 140.5 million units, DisplaySearch said.
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控) yesterday launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). ISE Labs Inc, a fully owned subsidiary of ASE, would operate the advanced testing facility. When added to its first facility in nearby Fremont, ISE would double its available research-and-development lab and business space to 150,000m2 in hopes of boosting the US semiconductor supply chain, the company said in a statement. “As the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain reshoring
VALUE: TSMC’s market capitalization far exceeds the combined size of all the Latin American companies on MSCI Inc’s benchmark for emerging markets Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) US$420 billion equity rally this year would get a valuation test this week when it reports earnings, with analysts expecting the chipmaker to raise full-year sales forecasts. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker would probably report a 29 percent increase in second-quarter net income on Thursday, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. More importantly, analysts from JPMorgan Chase & Co to Morgan Stanley expect it to also raise its full-year sales guidance, justifying another round of valuation expansion. Just like Nvidia Corp, TSMC has become a favorite artificial intelligence (AI)-bet for investors with
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: The previous shooting targeting a US president or major party candidate was the 1981 incident targeting then-US president Ronald Reagan Saturday’s shooting at former US president Donald Trump’s election rally raises his odds of winning back the White House, and trades betting on his victory would increase this coming week, investors said yesterday. Trump was shot in the ear during the rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday in what the authorities were treating as an assassination attempt. Trump, his face spattered with blood, pumped his fist moments after the attack, and his campaign said he was fine after the incident. Before the shooting, markets had reacted to the prospect of a Trump presidency by pushing the US dollar higher and positioning for a
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday thanked memory chipmaker Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra for his trust and continued investment in Taiwan, in a rare public meeting with a senior foreign tech executive. It is very unusual for Taiwan’s president to have publicized meetings with senior foreign tech executives, despite the nation being home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), whose chips help to power the surge in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Lai thanked Mehrotra for “showing trust and support for Taiwan” in a video released by the Presidential Office. “I want to thank Micron for its long-term