Demand from Chinese phone and tablet manufacturers keeps touch panel producers busy

Thanks to their lower prices, touch panel producers in China are taking business away from their counterparts in Taiwan. Handset and tablet manufacturers in China such as Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo are placing orders from suppliers in both Taiwan and China, but are increasingly turning to the latter. For example, industry sources say that China based touch panel maker O-Films is experiencing a hefty increase in orders.

The Taiwan based companies that are losing business include names like TPK and Young Fast Optoelectronics. Thanks to careful selection of low priced suppliers, a company like Xiaomi can offer the Xiaomi Hongmi, stuff it with a quad-core CPU, give the screen a 312ppi pixel density, and still make money selling it for the Yuan equivalent of $130 USD. That is because the phone cost Xiaomi just $85 USD to produce.

Most of the orders for touch panels from the Chinese vendors, are for smartphones and tablets that will be released sometime in the current quarter.

source: DigiTimes