Global shipments of LCD TVs larger than 70 inches have climbed sharply over the past four years, with models above 98 inches rising 12-fold, according to a Nikkei report citing Counterpoint Research. The shift reflects a broader move by manufacturers toward larger, higher-margin sets as the LCD market matures.

As strong AI demand continues to soak up semiconductor capacity, some ICs and passive components are seeing shortages and longer lead times. Qisda's display maker Data Image has stepped up policy-driven inventory buildup, with some industrial control products now carrying supply lead times of as long as one year and materials for the first and second quarters of 2027 already secured in advance.

BOE Technology Group and 3M have opened a joint research laboratory in Beijing that covers optical films, optically clear adhesives, structural adhesives and advanced materials development for LCD, OLED and MLED panels — turning what has been a roughly two-decade partnership into a shared development platform.

Largan Precision, the world's largest maker of smartphone camera lenses and a longtime supplier of lenses for Apple's iPhone, said on August 25 it would buy land and buildings in Taichung's Nantun district for NT$3.08 billion (approx. US$98 million). It is the company's fourth industrial property purchase in two months.

TPK Holding is accelerating its move from consumer touch panels into semiconductors, with its Through Glass Via (TGV) pilot line in Taoyuan, Taiwan set to begin operations in August or September. The company is also working with leading outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) providers on the project, while its new Thailand production base aims to complete trial runs by year-end and begin volume production in early 2027.

Iris Optronics, a manufacturer of cholesteric liquid crystal display (ChLCD) e-paper, announced upgrades to its Infinity solar-powered ChLCD e-paper series, including a mass-producible 31.5-inch large-format outdoor commercial display. It has also developed an embedded perovskite-powered ChLCD e-paper solution for indoor commercial display applications.

Korean display makers are stepping up patent licensing and cross-border enforcement as Chinese rivals have sharply narrowed the technology and market-share gap in OLED since 2020, just as competition expands into higher-value panels for notebooks and monitors.

Apple kicked off the tablet OLED era in 2024, introducing Tandem OLED in the iPad Pro to overcome bottlenecks in display lifespan and brightness. The iPad mini followed, set to adopt OLED in the second half of 2026, though with annual shipments hovering at just 2 million units, its impact is largely symbolic. Market research firm UBI Research noted that tablet OLED growth has largely stalled through 2024 and 2025, with OLED costs remaining the primary hurdle: panels currently run roughly twice the price of LCD alternatives, and narrowing that gap is widely viewed as the primary prerequisite for expanding OLED adoption in IT applications.

Asia Optical delivered strong second-quarter financial results while accelerating its strategic expansion across optical technologies. Key growth drivers include Metalens and Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), with digital camera shipments confirmed to top 4 million units in 2026.

Optical imaging technologies company New Smart Technology (NSTC) is moving beyond traditional optical and image inspection into semiconductor high-end automated optical inspection (AOI), co-packaged optics (CPO) optoelectronic modules, and unmanned vehicle vision systems, with a clear change in its revenue structure, according to chairman Stone Shih and president Phil Chen.