LG Display has increased fears of rapid supply growth of LCD panels by announcing it is considering constructing a new LCD production line to meet demands. Manufacturers of LCD television products have been enjoying a healthy level of demand for LCD flat-screens, bolstered recently by Chinese holidays and sporting events like the Winter Olympics.
However, concerns are taking root in the industry that it may return to a state of oversupply as manufacturers beef up production to capitalize on the demand. Controlling supply is important for players in the industry to maintain profit margins for the technology.
“Although demand is strong, growing capacity will become increasingly burdensome for the industry,” said Jason Kang, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities. “Supply is already growing and the growth will be faster next year.”
LG plans to begin operation of a separate production line in the first half of 2010, while Taiwanese rivals are increasing factory utilization. “We are considering increasing capacity because we have been unable to meet all client demand for some time,” said an LG Display spokesman. “But nothing has been decided yet.”
LG Display CFO James Jeong revealed to investors just last month that the company was meeting under 90 percent of orders received and that the situation was likely to continue for months.
Result for: screens
Amazon has announced their acquisition of the touchscreen company Touchco, a move that will lead to the next Kindle e-reader being a touchscreen device.
The NY Times says Touchco’s “interpolating force-sensitive resistance technology allows for flexible, transparent, pressure-sensitive touch-screens that could cost as little as $10 a square foot.”
By comparison, the iPad’s touchscreen is more expensive and “cannot detect the unlimited amount of simultaneous touch points that Touchco’s technology allows.”
Touchco’s screens can distinguish between the different pressures produced by a human finger or by a pen stylus.
Result for: screens
According to Mobile Crunch, a release candidate of Mobile Firefox is coming next week, finally giving users an in-depth look into the browser.
Says Mozilla’s VP of Mobile Jay Sullivan, as indexed by the source:
* Release candidate next week, final release within a few weeks
* Adblock Plus and around 30 other extensions are already playing friendly with Mobile Firefox, though they need some tweaking for the smaller screen
* Firefox won’t be the default browser on Maemo 5, though Nokia is considering the switch for Maemo 6 (which is coming in late 2010. We scooped the details and screenshots of Maemo 6 back in May.
* While they need pretty beefy hardware to make Mobile Firefox tick, the N900 isn’t the bottom line. “Everything now on the mid- to high-end is fine.”
* The Windows Mobile build is 3-4 months behind the Maemo build
* They’re focusing on webapp features. In its current state, web apps in Mobile Firefox can pull data from the accelerometer and GPS, and store data in memory for offline use
* In 2010, they plan to add multitouch support, haptic feedback, camera usage, WebGL, and improved Javascript support.
