E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s sole e-paper display supplier, yesterday said it expects to continue to grow its business next year as large-scale retailers in the US are joining their European counterparts to install electronic shelf labels (ESLs) as a labor shortage drags on.
Walmart Inc earlier this year announced a plan to adopt ESLs after nearly eight years of evaluations, while Best Buy Co and Home Depot Inc also adopted the cost-efficient electronic labels, following in the footsteps of Carrefour SA and Tesco PLC in Europe.
“We believe E Ink will grow next year, despite the global economy facing rising recession risks... The [revenue] growth might not be as dramatic as this year’s,” E Ink chairman Johnson Lee (李政昊) told a media gathering in Taipei yesterday.
Photo courtesy of E Ink Holdings Inc
If the global economy enters a recession next year, retailers might hesitate about spending on ESLs, the company said.
E Ink’s revenue soared 67 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of this year to NT$21.52 billion (US$701.3 million), the company’s highest revenue for the period.
More than half of the company’s revenue came from the ESL segment, the first time the business became the firm’s major source of income, E Ink said.
The company’s ESL business is expected to post its fastest growth next year, as large-scale retailers, including Best Buy and Amazon.com Inc are to install the devices, E Ink said.
“We are seeing that more retailers are willing to introduce ESLs extensively,” Lee said. “This year, we are benefiting from wide adoption of ESLs from some European retailers. We have been endeavoring to ship goods there.”
About 600 million ESLs were installed from 2012 to last year, accounting for about 10 percent of the overall market of 6 billion shelf labels, Lee said.
As long as the penetration rate continues to rise, there would be growth opportunities for the company, he said.
There is also replacement demand, Lee said, adding that the lifecycle of an electronic label is seven to eight years.
E-paper displays used in e-notes would be the company’s second growth engine next year, as the world’s top 10 tablet vendors, except Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, have rolled out e-notes, Lee said.
E Ink president F.Y. Gan (甘豐源) said electronic labels used on packing boxes would be the next market with strong growth potential.
Each year, about 10 billion boxes are consumed worldwide, which is a huge number, Lee said.
Like ESLs, Europe would be the first adopter of electronic labels for packing boxes, as the EU stipulates that all such containers must be made reusable by 2030, he said.
Electronic labels can be used to track the usage of such boxes, he added.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement. The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said. The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far. According to TSMC, the first Arizona
The lethal hack of Hezbollah’s Asian-branded pagers and walkie-talkies has sparked an intense search for the devices’ path, revealing a murky market for older technologies where buyers might have few assurances about what they are getting. While supply chains and distribution channels for higher-margin and newer products are tightly managed, that is not the case for older electronics from Asia where counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals can sometimes make it impossible to identify the source of a product, analysts and consultants say. The response from the companies at the center of the booby-trapped gadgets that killed 37
FRIENDLY TAKEOVER: While Qualcomm Inc’s proposal to buy some or all of Intel raises the prospect of other competitors, Broadcom Inc is staying on the sidelines Qualcomm Inc has approached Intel Corp to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker, people with knowledge of the matter said, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever merger and acquisition deals. California-based Qualcomm proposed a friendly takeover for Intel in recent days, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The proposal is for all of the chipmaker, although Qualcomm has not ruled out buying some parts of Intel and selling off others. It is uncertain whether the initial approach would lead to an agreement and any deal is likely to come under close antitrust scrutiny
SECURITY CONCERNS: The proposed ban on Chinese autonomous vehicle software and hardware would go into effect with the 2027 and 2030 model years respectively The US Department of Commerce today is expected to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on US roads due to national security concerns, two sources said. US President Joe Biden’s administration has raised concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on US drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the Internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the