Ultrachip ramps production of new handset-use LCD driver ICs
Katherine Chiu, Hsinchu; Jack Lu, DigiTimes.com [Thursday 19 February 2004]
Ultrachip, a fabless LCD driver IC design firm, expects to ramp up production of a range of its driver ICs for mobile phones this year as demand for color handsets picks up, said a company source.
The source said Ultrachip expects to begin mass production of a 65,536-color STN LCD single-chip solution within the next two months. Ultrachip is test-producing the product using a 0.35-micron, high-voltage process at United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC).
For the fast growing handset-use TFT LCD market, Ultrachip began pilot runs of its 65,536- and 262,144-color driver single-chip solutions using a 0.25-micron high voltage process at UMC this month. Mass production is expected to begin in the second half of this year, the source said.
For its existing 4,096-color STN driver IC, shipments grew to three million units per month in January, up from about two million units in December.
Worldwide demand for color TFT LCDs will boom from 86 million units last year to almost 500 million units by 2007, about half the projected total global display market by volume, according to Vinita Jakhanwal, a senior analyst at research firm iSuppli. |
