AUO's production lines fully booked to fill orders till november
H.B. Chen, vice chairman of AU Optronics Corp. (AUO), the largest thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panel manufacturer in Taiwan, recently said that his company's order visibility has been extended to November and the company is planning to set up a front-section (array process) LCD module (LCM) plant in mainland China.
Chen made the statements at the opening ceremony of a Photovoltaics (PV) testing laboratory in Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). The vice chairman said that AUO's cooperation ties with ITRI would intensify further as the company has also been aggressively trying to tap into the PV and LED business fields.
Latest panel quote data released by DisplaySearch, a major player in display market research and consulting, showed that the prices of almost all types and sizes of panels have reached the top line and would stay stable in September, indicating that the panel price hikes seen since March will ease, except for the prices of special-format 17-inch monitor panels.
Some market insiders attributed the hovering panel prices partly to high parts inventory level at downstream makers.
AUO is also actively developing business deployment in LED fields. The company's subsidiary Lextar Electronics Corp. (Chen is also chairman of Lextar) has begun small-batch production and is scheduled to enter into volume production in 2010. Lextar plans to set up four new LED plants in Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP)'s Houli Base with total investment of NT$30 billion (US$923 million).
