OLED display driver ICs (DDI) supply may fall short of demand in 2022, with the chip shortage likely to disrupt shipments for smartphones, according to industry sources.
TV-related IC demand is expected to pick up as early as the first quarter of 2022 following a slowdown in TV market sales seen since the third quarter of 2021, according to sources at fabless chipmakers.
MediaTek has unveiled its new Pentonic smart TV SoC family with the introduction of the 2000 series, which will power next generation flagship 8K TVs. The new SoC series is the world's first commercial TV chip manufactured using TSMC's N7 (namely 7nm process technology), according to the fabless company.
E Ink Holdings (EIH) is expanding production capacity for e-paper materials, mainly PI (polyimide) varnish, PI roll and functional film, through setting up four additional production lines at its factory in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, according to company chairman and CEO Johnson Lee.
LED driver IC design house Mcroblock expects the revenue proportion for driver ICs used in miniLED backlighting and RGB fine-pitch miniLED displays to increase from 15% at present to 20% in 2022, according to the company.
Coretronic has reported consolidated revenues of NT$4.728 billion (US$169 million) for October, decreasing 3.28% on month but increasing 23.51% on year, and those of NT$39.446 billion for January-October, growing 13.44%.
General Interface Solution (GIS) has reported third-quarter 2021 operating profit margin at 3.74%, rising 0.98pp sequentially and 3.48pp year-on-year, thanks to volume production of integrated touch and display modules used in miniLED-backlit tablets, according to the company.
Foxconn is bent on breaking the barriers to the carmaking industry. Foxconn chairman Young-Way Liu, speaking at the NATEA-orgainized the US-Taiwan High-Tech Forum, said he believes Taiwan, with its prowess in the semiconductor sector, stands a good chance of succeeding in the EV sector. At the same event, Applied Materials corporate VP Brian Shieh shared his views on the outlook of the display industry. In the semiconductor sector, TSMC is on track to move its 3nm node to volume production on schedule.
Taiwan-based makers generated NT$433.7 billion (US$15.5 billion) from photonic products in third-quarter 2021, increasing 3.28% sequentially, and NT$1,241.9 billion for the first three quarters of the year, rising 20.60% year-on-year, according to Photonics Industry & Technology Development Association (PIDA).
Brian Shieh, group vice president and general manager of the Display Technology Group at Applied Materials, participated in the US-Taiwan High Tech Forum - held online by North America Taiwanese Engineering & Science Association (NATEA) on November 5 - to discuss the evolution of display technology and its impact on the semiconductor industry. The new generation technologies including Natural 3D are expected to further expand the semiconductor content and play a role in driving the megatrends of the semiconductor industry.
Polarizer maker BenQ Materials is expanding production capacity for separator film used in batteries, with the capacity to increase to 40 million square meters at the end of 2021 and further to 100 million square meters in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to company president Ray Liu.
Display driver IC and SoC design house Novatek Microelectronics has taken a technological lead in OLED DDI (display driver IC) and moved a step further to develop OLED TDDI (touch & display driver integration) ICs which are in process of certification, and aims to become the first provider of smartphone-use OLED TDDI ICs among IC design houses, according to president Steve Wang.
TV SoC demand has started to drop but at a slower pace compared to slowdowns in demand for other TV-use chips, such as display driver ICs, according to industry sources.
Outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) service providers, such as ChipMOS Technologies and Chipband Technology, feel difficult to hike quotes for display driver ICs (DDI) until the first half of 2022, for problems regarding cost and structure of supply chains have not been solved yet, according to industry sources.
Touch solution provider TPK Holding has extended production to 3D printing and application of nano silver-based touch sensors to touch solutions, according to company president Leo Hsieh.
Electronic paper (e-paper) maker E Ink Holdings has obtained Quality-mark and China-mark for Paper Like Display certification for E Ink Kaleido Plus e-paper display module from TUV Rheinland Greater China, according to the company.
Coretronic has upward adjusted forecast growth in 2021 shipments for LED backlight units (BLUs) from 20% originally to 25-30%, according to president Sarah Lin for the company's Display Business Group.
High-tech supply chains are encountering the availabilities of different chips that are in varying degrees. Chips such as display driver ICs (DDI) are no longer in tight supply, prompting suppliers of such chips to cut back wafer starts at foundries, according to industry sources.
Apple is showing its preference for miniLED backlighting for high-end notebooks and tablets, and Apple is likely to adopt such backlighting for 13.3-inch MacBook Air to be launched in 2022, according to industry sources.
Local governments' restricting power supply in China has led to decreases in utilization of production capacities at LCD panel supply chain makers' factories mostly in southern and eastern China to about 60%, and consequently, output of panel components and LCD modules has dropped by about 30%, according to AVC Revo.
The car industry has been plagued by component shortages, and automotive IC shortages are likely to last till at least 2023. TSMC's plan to build a mature process fab in Japan comes as good news for a semiconductor sector yearning for more capacity supply. And PanelSemi CEO Ting Chin-lung is making efforts to materialize his concept of "panel semiconductor."
Chinese panel makers have become the world's largest LCD makers after over a decade of fierce market competition, while South Korean panel makers have chosen to gradually withdraw from the LCD market and turn their attention to OLED.
Coretronic expects October shipments for projectors and image devices to decrease about 20% sequentially and those for LED backlight units (BLUs) to slightly decline, according to the company.
