Ritdisplay Corp (錸寶科技), an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) manufacturer, expects business in the second half of this year to beat its estimates, supported by surging demand from new clients and new orders, a company executive said yesterday.
Ritdisplay, a subsidiary of Ritek Corp (錸德科技), mainly supplies 2-inch and smaller passive matrix OLED (PMOLED) displays. PMOLED displays are used in wearable devices, smart home controllers and home appliances.
“The order forecast from clients for this and next quarter is much stronger than the company’s expectations,” president and CEO D.C. Wang (王鼎章) said on the sidelines of a news conference at the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Ritdisplay — which counts wearable device maker Fitbit Inc, the world’s largest wearable device provider, among its clients — is also to benefit from new customers’ projects, such as wearable devices, Wang said, adding that the company’s factories are running at full utilization.
Revenue is expected to grow more than 20 percent in the second half from NT$996.71 million (US$31.86 million) in the first half, Wang said.
Ritdisplay plans to expand capacity by between 20 and 40 percent next year to meet rising demand for PMOLED products, Wang said.
The company has started to invest in the research and development (R&D) of flexible PMOLED technology used in lighting products and hopes to unveil its first product by next year at the earliest and go into mass production by 2018, Wang said.
In related news, AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the nation’s No. 2 LCD panel maker, said it would start to ship non-flexible active matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays for wearable and virtual-reality products this quarter.
AUO chairman Paul Peng (彭双浪) said the company has been investing in flexible and non-flexible AMOLED display R&D for more than 15 years.
AUO is capable of mass producing non-flexible AMOLED displays, but requires funding support to produce flexible AMOLED products, Peng said.
Producing flexible AMOLED displays could cost at least tens of billions of New Taiwan dollars, which would be too costly for a single company, Peng said.
He said that Taiwanese firms have advanced flexible AMOLED technology, ahead of China, South Korea and Japan, but without government funding, Taiwan might lose its place in the market.
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