Integrated Digital Technologies Inc (劍揚光學) said yesterday that it will start mass production of embedded solar cells in liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels by the end of this year because of the increased popularity of panels known as interactive screens (iScreen).
The company said it would ship 5 million units of iScreen panels by next year, grabbing a global market share of 20 percent, Naejye Hwang (黃乃傑), Integrated Digital’s display division director, told a press conference.
“Unlike other touch screen panels that have extra film or glass with photo sensors on top of the regular LCD panel, Integrated Digital embeds solar cells in the thin-film-transistor [TFT] array layer during the panel-making process, thereby reducing the weight and thickness of the final product,” Hwang said.
This can save up to 30 percent of manufacturing costs because it reduces the need for additional film or glass components as well as additional labor, company founder and chief executive officer Hwang Huey-liang (黃惠良) said.
The company said the iScreen could be used on PCs, while its applications ranged from gaming, interactive Excel, Picasa, Google Earth as well as AtutoCAD and other drawing software. It said iScreens use less power and have an extended lifetime and unique remote control and writing capabilities.
The company will display its technology at Computex Taipei, which opens on Tuesday and closes on June 6 at Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall I.
Meanwhile, VMAX Telecom Co (威邁思電信) will provide high-speed wireless Internet service on the MRT Muzha Line as part of its program for Computex Taipei.
It said WiMAX would be the main theme of this year’s show, using the slogan: “WiMAX on the Move.”
“There will be a more diverse display of [WiMAX] products and many are equipped with built-in WiMAX chips,” said Enoch Du (杜全昌), secretary-general of the Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會).
“This year, the entire [WiMAX] industry is expected to reach a growth rate of 50 percent and the output value will exceed NT$10 billion by the end of this year,” Du said.
Michael Chen (陳武宏), director of Intel Asia-Pacific Embedded Sales Group, said WiMAX has proved to be an economic and efficient broadband network.
Intel projected that the number of WiMAX subscribers worldwide could nearly double to 800 million by the end of next year, from 430 million at present, Chen said.
On April 27, Tatung InfoComm Co (大同電信) became the first company in Taiwan to launch its WiMAX service in Penghu.
Five more WiMAX operators are expected to launch commercial services in the second half of this year, Du said.
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
TALENT FACTOR: The nation’s chip sector would be difficult to replace, but to maintain that advantage, Taiwan must retain skilled workers, an academic said A group of experts on Sunday called on Taiwan to strive to maintain its world-leading position in the semiconductor industry, with a US-China chip dispute expected to continue regardless of who becomes the next US president. Tamkang University Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies director Li Da-jung (李大中) said at a Taipei seminar on global semiconductor security that the relationship between the two superpowers would remain confrontational. There appears to be “no turning back” in US-China relations, as US presidential candidates US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump are both expected to continue Washington’s hawkish stance
RSS