Taiwan earthquake may send LCD, chip prices higher

IDG News Service - A 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Taiwan early Thursday may affect the global technology industry by sending prices of LCD panels and certain chips higher, analysts say.

The Taiwan government has already confirmed dozens of injuries due to the temblor, mainly caused by falling objects, as well as power outages and several fires, one of them engulfing a factory owned by Everest Textile in the southern city of Tainan.

The earthquake also stopped work at LCD and chip factories in the Tainan Science Park, including at Chi Mei Optoelectronics, the fourth biggest LCD panel maker in the world, and at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip maker.

The temblor came at a bad time for the global technology industry. Brisk demand for a number of products requiring LCD screens, from laptop PCs and desktop monitors to LCD TVs, and for chips, including PCs, Blu-ray Disc players and smartphones, has already caused shortages this year. Companies have announced plans to spend big on new factories to keep up with demand. The good news is that the March through June time period is considered a slower time of the year for gadget demand, and a time when component prices normally fall.

This year, however, prices will probably not decline and could actually rise, analysts say.

"While it is too early to gauge the impact of supply and pricing of TFT-LCD panels, we can assume that any downward pressure on panel pricing has been eliminated," wrote Shawn Lee, an analyst at DisplaySearch, in a blog post. "In fact, there are some indications that there will be another panel price increase in March due to the earthquake’s impact on the supply chain."

Chi Mei, which houses its main operations at the Tainan Science Park, said its factories were shut down by the temblor, but that most of its production lines have already recovered. HannStar Display, which also operates LCD factories in southern Taiwan, also stopped production, but said the temblor will not affect its quarterly financial results, in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

Chi Mei accounted for 13.3 percent of the global supply of LCD panels as of January, according to iSuppli, while HannStar accounted for 3 percent. The market researcher believes work outages at the two companies will impact large-sized LCD panels most, such as the kind used in LCD TVs.

U.S. glass maker Corning reported that its facilities in Tainan were largely unaffected by the quake but did require some minor repairs.

"Management at our Tainan LCD glass facility has reported that there were no injuries or damage to the facility, and that all glass-making operations recovered within hours and are running normally," Corning said in a statement. The company makes glass used in LCD panel production.