Taiwan LED maker Epistar Corp. announced that it has won contract orders from Korea’s Samsung for LEDs used in LED-backlit LCD TVs.
It’s known that Samsung and LG have launched their newest LED-backlit models at a price of under NT$60,000 per unit, in a bid to fuel consumer demand with such low prices. This is expected to create huge business potential for the upstream LED suppliers, like Epistar, in the near future. Institutional investors indicated that prices drops are gradually boosting popularity of LED-backlit LCD TVs worldwide. In comparison, an LED-backlit LCD TV generally uses over 1,000 LED chips, 10 times the amount for either a mobile phone or notebook PC. Based on the product’s 2% penetration rate in the global LCD TV market, there will be approximately 3 billion LED chips in demand this year.
In order to expand its LED epitaxial wafer capacity and enhance production capability, Epistar spent a huge amount of money introducing numerous MOCVD devices since last year. In fact, the firm has indirectly joined Samsung’s supply chain of LED-backlit mobile phones since 2008, effectively proving its world-caliber production capability of high-brightness LEDs.
In addition, the sharply growing market for LED-backlit notebook PCs will also infuse strong growth momentum into Epistar’s business operation this year. According to institutional investors, global sales of the products are estimated at 43 million units, generating demand for an estimated 1.5-2 million LED chips this year. To seize the enormous business opportunity, the firm is determined to mainly focus on OEM to shrewdly avoid patent infringements.
