According to its president Lin Sheng-chang, Chunghwa Picture Tubes’ (CPT) LCD panel manufacturing lines are currently operating at full production capacity, after winning full-screen panel orders from the four largest smartphone vendors in China, as reported by Digitimes.
According to the report, CPT has also been adjusting its pricing for smartphone panels upwards, with plans to push it even further during the third quarter of 2018, as 18:9 smartphone displays are currently in such high demand. With the current production schedule set to extend into the third quarter, the company is also looking at increasing its production ratio of full-screen panels from 60-70% of its overall volume, up to 80%.
Lin goes on to say that the increasing average size of smartphone displays — up to 5″ in 2018 from 4-4.5″ in 2017 — is expected to push the company’s overall smartphone panel shipments down to 130-140 million from 160 million in 2017.
Honor Play, the latest handset from China’s biggest smartphone vendor, Huawei,
features a full 6.3″ LCD screen with a 1080 x 2340 resolution.
He also touched on the company’s automotive panel business, which it is believed will grow from 12 million panels in 2017 to 14 million in 2018. Automotive panel production will be boosted to account for two-thirds of the company’s overall output in order to sustain its growth.
Meanwhile, Fujian Hua Chia Cai, a subsidiary of CPT, is currently outputting 4,000-5,000 substrates a month from its 6G TFT-LCD fab in China. Lin predicted that the facility will reach its full production capacity of 30,000 substrates per month during the first half of 2019.
