ID :
169118
Fri, 03/18/2011 - 05:32
Auther :

Japan quake to have limited impact on Taiwan's LCD sector

By Kim Young-gyo
HONG KONG (Yonhap) - Japan's massive earthquake will have a limited impact on Taiwan's liquid crystal display (LCD) panel makers in the short-term as they have secured parts to sustain their production for one to two months, Taiwanese media said Friday.
"We have a one-month inventory of Anisotropic Conductive Films (ACFs). We don't expect to see a big short-term effect," Peng Suanglang, executive deputy general manager in AU Optronics Corp., told the DigiTimes.
An ACF is an interconnect system that is commonly used in LCD manufacturing to make electrical and mechanical connections that link electronics components to the glass substrates of the LCD.
Japan's Hitachi Chemical Co. and Sony Chemical & Information Device Corp. are the leading suppliers of ACFs, together holding about 70 percent of the global market share.
South Korean and Taiwanese panel makers are known to have been relying on the Japanese companies for 40 percent of their parts.
Peng said Japanese ACF makers have started test-runs of their production lines earlier on Tuesday. They had halted operations after northeastern Japan was struck a week ago by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake.
Taiwan's Chimei Innolux Corp. was also reported to have secured a two-month inventory of components.
"The supply of ACFs and silicon wafers is tight, but it does not mean that supply has been cut out," said Wang Zhichao, general manager of Chimei Innolux.
Chimei buys ACFs from one Japanese firm and two South Korean firms. However, the firm procures about 50 percent of all the components, such as glass substrates and color filters, from Japan.
Both officials said that a long-term supply of the LCD panels could be affected if Japanese firms are forced to delay their normal operations due to limits on the supply of electricity.
"As there have been disruptions to transportation and communications, we need to see how the delivery of panel parts will be affected," Peng said, adding that it could place upward pressure on prices of panels.
Wang had a similar view, saying the recent oversupply of LCD panels will decrease.

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