LED Suppliers Strongly Buoyed by Tablet PC Orders

Taipei, June 3, 2011 (CENS)--With more brands pushing tablet PCs to compete with Apple iPad, Taiwanese suppliers of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are winning increasing orders for LEDs used as backlight modules.

Asus has unveiled a tablet PC to achieve better-than-expected sales. HP, Samsung, and RIM are all scheduled to launch tablets in June.

Some market research firms forecast that in next two years the market share of Android 3.0 operating system (OS) will exceed the iPad OS, bringing lucrative opportunities for non-iPad tablet PC makers and suppliers of backlight LEDs, especially Taiwanese companies as Epistar Corp., Formosa Epitaxy Inc., Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., Unity Opto Technology Co., Ltd. etc.

Industry sources say demand for the Asus Eee Pad Transformer tablet PCs has been outstripping supply, leading to flooding backlight-LED orders for supplier Unity Opto as well as upstream material supplier Epistar and Formosa Epitaxy.

The supply of LEDs for tablets is dominated by Taiwanese suppliers who can supply low forward voltage (VF), high-brightness, and special-designed LEDs.

Everlight, for example, has won LED orders from local tablet PC brands as Acer and Asus, and aims to win more orders from other international vendors, as well as planning to send product samples produced by a joint venture with Toyoda Gosei of Japan to potentially big customer Apple.

Formosa Epitaxy says a high proportion of orders received in the second quarter is for tablet PCs.

Industry insiders, however, warn that supply of LEDs for higher-grade applications might fall short in the third quarter, as some upstream makers' added capacity can not meet requirements for tablet PC applications.