Epistar has said that orders from mainland China for LED chips for smart phones, LCD TV panel backlighting and fine pixel-pitch displays have increased significantly, and delivery time is scheduled for October 2018.
As a result, the production capacity of the blue LED chip has been completely released, and the MOCVD equipment pre-engineered for engineering has been put into operation as an additional production capacity. Overall shipments are expected to increase significantly in August, and shipments will increase further in September.
For LED chips used in fine pixel-pitch displays, some Chinese suppliers that produce such displays initially relied on chips from Chinese manufacturers, but recently, orders have been transferred to crystals due to concerns about product quality. Yuan Optoelectronics.
In terms of applications, the backlight currently accounts for 25-30% of the total revenue of Epistar, the illumination is 20-25%, and the fine pixel pitch display is 15-20%. As Epistar will begin selling Mini LEDs for fine pixel-pitch displays, the division's revenue share is expected to grow to 20-25%.
Epistar currently has about 350 MOCVD devices and is aligning some of them to produce VCSEL (Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser) chips. A portion of the 4-inch wafer MOCVD equipment will produce VCSEL chips for data centers, and a portion of the 6-inch wafer MOCVD equipment will produce VCSEL chips for 3D sensors. By constantly adjusting the use of MOCVD equipment, Epistar said it plans to expand VCSEL capacity by 25% by 2018.
