Taiwan-based polymer materials supplier U-Best Polymer Industry is expected to start shipping its hard coat (HC) films to Chinese handset vendors for foldable smartphone applications in the third quarter of 2021 at the earliest, according to company president NH Huang.
U-Best's HC films, which are being developed and produced by optimizing related technologies transferred from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and in-house-developed polymer materials, are comparable with similar products from Japan and Korea in terms of functionality, Huang said.
As the related polymer materials are developed in-house, Huang said that U-Best's HC films can be finetuned to meet the requirements of individual clients and yet come with competitive pricing.
In addition to supporting flexible AMOLED panels, its HC films can also be applied to mini/microLED displays for tablet and notebook applications, Huang said, expecting sales of devices featured flexible displays to start gaining momentum in 2022.
U-Best is also developing other HC materials with anti-glare and anti-reflection features for other applications such as for the production of ultra-thin glass (UTG) products, Huang revealed.
U-Best has reported revenues of NT$53.21 million (US$1.92 million) for May, increasing 509.95% from a year earlier. For January-May, revenues totaled N$234.63 million, up 21.41% on year.
