Taiwan’s two major backlight unit (BLU) manufacturers reported sequential falls in shipments and sales in November.
Coretronic’s BLU shipments fell 6% month on month in November to 7.7 million units and sales for the month were down 8.5% at NT$6.2 billion ($198.7 million), though this was an 11.9% improvement year on year. For the year to date, Coretronic shipped 83.4 million BLUs, up 22% YoY and total sales were 13.5% higher at NT$74.7 billion ($2.4 million). The company also shipped 89,000 DLP projectors in November and 1.1 million for the period from January to November. Of the 7.7 million BLU’s sold last month, 470,000 were TV-use, 1.9 million were for monitors and 2.4 million each were used in notebooks and also tablets.
Radiant Opto-Electronics shipped 11.3 million BLUs in November, dropping 6.9% MoM, while sales for the month were down 2.3% sequentially and 20.5% YoY at NT$5 billion ($160.3 million). Sales for the first 11 months of 2014 were also down, dropping 18% to NT$46.6 billion ($1.5 billion). The company said that it expects shipments of BLUs for tablets to fall in December but those for TV and monitor use to increase. Radiant Opto has also extended its BLU production to smartphone applications, with shipments to begin in the first quarter of 2015.
