Taiwan's Coretronic now world's No.1 maker of projectors, backlight panels

Taipei, June 1, 2005 (CENS)--Taiwan's Coretronic Corp., the world's largest supplier of projectors and backlight panels, has aimed to ship 800,000 projectors and 27.4 million backlight panels this year, up 94.2% and 64.8%, respectively, from last year.

In addition, the firm is also expected to see its shipment of high-definition TVs to shoot up 550% this year from last year.

Some institutional investors estimated that Coretronic's projector shipment in May is expected to rebound to about 45,000 units after settling component problems. They also projected the firm's backlight-panel revenue to outstrip NT$2.18 billion (US$69.43 million), a monthly record set in April, this month.

Chang Wei-yi, company chairman, said Coretronic has gradually withdrawn from monitor production, which once accounted for 30% of the company's revenue, since early this year. The firm is pursuing higher-margin operations.

Chang said that his company's backlight customers include all the top-five thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panel makers in Taiwan as well as their counterparts in South Korea and mainland China.

Currently, the cheapest projector model made by Coretronic is priced at about NT$30,000 (US$955), but Chang said that one NT$24,900 (US$793) model and another one of NT$19,900 (US$634) are expected to be launched the end of the year and in 2006, respectively.

The chairman said as the slide of projector prices would stimulate family-user demand, his company is scheduled to launch some integrated-function projector models with digital versatile disc (DVD) broadcasting function this month, and debut some other models with integrated TV functions at the end of this year.

Coretronic Shipment Goals
Product	2004 Shipment	2005 Goal
Projector	412,000	800,000
Backlight*	16.62 million	27.46 million
HD TV	20,000	131,000
Monitor	908,000	514,000

*: Including shipments from mainland China and Taiwan.