Chunghwa Picture Tubes Lands Nokia's Order for 2-inch Display Panels

Taipei, Sept. 30, 2009 (CENS)--Closely working with Compal Electronics Inc. to explore the market for small and medium-sized display panels, Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd., a Taiwanese display panel maker, has landed Nokia's contract orders for 2-inch models to be used in low-end handsets, successfully joining the globally leading brand's supply chain, according to industry sources.

To quickly build its footholds in the market for small- and medium-sized display panels, Chunghwa Picture Tubes decided to team up with Compal, with the partner holding a 19.9% stake worth NT$7 billion (US$215.38 million at US$1: NT$32.5) as the second-largest shareholder in the firm.

Chunghwa Picture Tubes has been working hard with Compal's reinvested company Toppoly Optoelectronics Corp., a maker of display panels for handsets, on market expansion and the R& D of products and technologies. Such concerted efforts work well, as both sides have been capable of jointly scrambling for contract orders from large-sized clients, like Nokia.

At present, Chunghwa Picture Tubes runs a 4-generation, 6-generation and two 4.5-generation display panel fabrication plants, while Toppoly owns a 3.5-generation plant. In light of Chunghwa Picture Tubes's huge production capacity, Toppoly also farms out part of production to the former every month.

Both sides have also moved to venture into production of display panels for other applications. Chunghwa Picture Tubes noted that it will be increasingly concentrated on development of small- and medium-sized display panels.

Chunghwa Picture Tubes's supply of amorphous thin film transistor display panels, has enabled Toppoly to use its spare production lines of low-temperature poly-silicon to roll out more high-end products, thus having gradually improved its business operations since the beginning of the third quarter of the year. So far, the firm has achieved single-month shipment of over 11 million display panels in different specifications and run at a 90%-plus capacity, very likely to turn profitable soon.