It’s reported that Taiwan LED maker Epistar Corp. brings its green-blue LED chips with brightness of 2000mcd to join Korea’s Samsung Electronics’ supply chain of LED-backlit LCD TVs.
At present, although demand for display panels remains gloomy, the world’s major LCD TV brands, including Sony, Samsung and so on, have continued focusing promotion on LED-backlit LCD TVs. Samsung’ LED-backlit LCD TV uses blue LED chips and red and green fluorescent as its backlight, and is therefore as cost-efficient as a CCFL model in backlight. Some noted that sales of 25 million 40-inch LED-backlit LCD TVs alone will double or triple existing monthly capacity of 3 billion LED chips worldwide in demand. In short, popularity of the products will hopefully help LED makers weather the recent sales collapse.
Boasting cutting-edge production technology to produce the green-blue LED chips for LED-backlit LCD TVs, Epistar is hence qualified to ship the products to Samsung as Taiwan’s only supplier of such chips. B. J. Lee, chairman of Epistar, said that his company’s LED shipment is expected to keep trending upward in the future as long as LED-backlit LCD TVs get more and more popular worldwide.
In addition to Epistar, including Formosa Epitaxy Inc. and Genesis Photonics Inc., have been gearing up to join leading Korean brands’ supply chains of LED-backlit LCD TVs via either local subcontractors or LED packaging and testing companies, but patent license limits their moves on the matter. At the moment, Epistar is the only make in its line that has succeeded in tapping Korean brands’ supply chain.
Epistar indicated that its LED shipment to foreign OEMs of LED-backlit LCD TVs has significantly increased to account for 10-15% of the total in the second half of this year from 5-10% in the first half.
