AUO Wins Orders for OGS Touch Panels from International Brands

Taipei, Aug. 22, 2012 (CENS)--AU Optronics Corp. (AUO), a major maker of thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panels in Taiwan, recently won orders for its OGS (One Glass Solution) touch panels from international brands as Amazon, Sony, Asus, Lenovo and Nokia.

Insiders said that AUO has been venturing into higher value-added products, including the OGS touch panel, and has received orders for Amazon's 6-inch tablet PC and Sony's 15.6-inch tablet and other notebook PCs.

The panel maker has also kicked off shipping OGS panels to Asus' Transformer tablet PCs, Lenovo's tablet PCs, Nokia's 3.9-inch smartphone, Sony's 4.3-inch smartphone (OGS panels integrated with active matrix organic light-emit diode, or AMOLED panel).

Insiders also said that AUO started mass production of 7.85-inch OGS panels for Apple's iPad mini in July, shipping monthly about two million units. AUO has moved production of some tablet- and notebook-use LCD modules (LCMs) to Taiwan, as result of overloads at its LCD lines in Suzhou (Jiangsu Province) and Xiamen (Fujian Province) of China, on which AUO has refused to comment.

Hon Hai reportedly plans to adopt 60-inch LCD panels produced by Sharp of Japan in its LCD TVs, then sell them to company employees for only about NT$40,000 (US$1,333) each. Hon Hai's move is expected to further drive down panel prices to ignite more underselling.

To survive the deeply-red market, according to K.Y. Lee, AUO's chairman, development toward value-added products, conducting technical upgrading, continued corporate streamlining, and resource integration are key.

AUO has installed two production lines for tablet-PC touch panels in the Longtan factory, northern Taiwan, and will installed another new one to meet demand for integrated and higher unit-price OGS panels by the end of the year.