Robust Google Nexus 7 Sales Benefit Unity Opto, FOREPI

Taipei, Aug. 6, 2012 (CENS)--Industry executives estimated Unity Opto Technology Co., Ltd. and Formosa Epitaxy Inc. (FOREPI) to see monthly revenue from July to September set new highs mostly thanks to robust sales of Google Nexus 7 tablets, which adopt the two companies' LEDs as backlights.

Google released the tablet last month. Industry executives estimated first batch of the shipment at one million systems. Based on the bright forecast, some market watchers have projected total shipments throughout this year to top 10 million systems, better than somewhere between five million and 10 million systems previously forecast.

Prosperous sales of the Google tablet PCs have driven up capacity utilization rate and gross margin at Unity and FOREPI, they said.

Unity's gross margin for this quarter is estimated to gain four to five percentage points from last quarter's some 20%.

Unity will announce its revenue result for last month sometime this month. Industry executives estimated the company's July revenue to hit record high of NT$800 million (US$26 million at US$1:NT$30) and this and next months the company would post strongest revenue growth of Taiwan's LED packaging industry thanks to brisk backlight demands.

People said Unity was once contracted to supply LED backlights to all of Asustek Computer's Transformer tablets, enabling it to achieve the highest penetration in non Apple tablet backlight market.

Unity executives projected a total of 18 million tablet PCs to be shipped worldwide this year alone, creating a market of 540 million LEDs based on an average 30 LEDs for each tablet. They estimated the backlight demands would bring the company over NT$1.2 billion (US$40 million) in revenue this year.

As Unity builds FOREPI's chips in its packages, the prosperous business will also benefit FOREPI. In addition to business created by Nexus 7, FOREPI is also vigorously drumming up orders from backlight suppliers providing small and medium size backlights.

Swarming orders will keep FOREPI's capacity inundated until the end of next month. The company has recently raised NT$1.5 billion (US$50 million) to expand capacity.

Industry executives estimated the company's revenue for last month to hit 22 month high and its monthly revenue of this quarter would continuously climb.