Taiwan's LED makers including Epistar Corp., Unity Opto Technology Co., Ltd., and Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. are estimated to benefit from these tablet PC plans.

Taiwan's industry executives pointed out that tablet PCs will create business opportunity for Taiwan's LED makers while the market for TV backlights started losing growth steam in the third quarter.

They said tablet PC backlights are particularly suitable for manufacturers specializing in small and medium backlights for uses in mobile phones and digital photo frames.

In Taiwan, the manufacturers include Unity, Everlight, Harvatek Corp. and Lextar Electronics Corp. Currently, Unity sees laptop backlights account for 10% of its revenue, while handset backlights constitute 30% of Everlight's revenue.

A cross-licensing agreement recently signed between Epistar, currently Taiwan's No.1 LED chipmaker, and Toyoda Gosei of Japan is estimated to give a boost to Taiwan's backlight makers in capturing contracts from brand-name suppliers of tablet PCs.

Unity plans to boost monthly output to 580 to 600 million SMD (surface mount device) LED packages dedicated to backlights in 2011 from current 450 million packages. The company will jointly found a packaging venture with Formosa Epitaxy Inc. and Forward Electronics Corp. in mainland China as part of its expansion plan.

Thanks to significant demand growth of LED backlight and LED lighting, Unity saw its revenue for the first three quarters rise 85% year on year, to NT$5.1 billion (US$166 million at US$1:NT$31), and after-tax net income for the same period jump 48% from a year earlier, to NT$895 million (US$28 million).