Foxconn's Tianyi seeks to establish an 8.5-Gen LTPS LCD/OLED fab in Taiwan

In past years we heard several reports saying that China's Hon Hai (Foxconn) is starting to develop OLED displays. Now digitimes reports that Tianyi Display Technology (part of the Hon Hai Group) is planning to establish an LTPS fab in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This fab will be used to produce both LCD and OLED displays.

Tianyi reportedly plans to rent an existing 8.5-Gen fab that is owned by Innolux (Hon Hai is a shareholder in Innolux). If all goes well, mass production is expected to begin in late 2015. It's likely that they will start with LTPS-LCD production and move to OLEDs later (this is the plan currently underway by several display makers in China). This is a bit confusing as this is a large (8.5-gen) fab that is probably geared to TV panel production and not small displays for mobile devices (which is Foxconn's reported production goal).

Interestingly, last year it was reported that Foxconn is developing 350 PPI OLED panels in collaboration with Innolux with aims to start mass production towards the end of 2015. Foxconn is a major Apple supplier.

Innolux has been promising small scale OLED production back in 2012, but this never materialized, and the company shifted focus to 4K technologies later that year. Innolux is still developing OLED technologies but it doesn't seem likely mass production will commence any time soon.

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Posted: Oct 07,2014 by Ron Mertens