July 6, 2000

While most manufacturers light emitting diodes (LEDs) did not do very well last year, they see a brighter future ahead because of increasing demands for these semiconductors as indicating lamps, blacklight sources for automotive gauges and panels of computer and information products as well as street traffic signal boards.

Taiwan's leading makers of these devices, such as Opto Tech Corp., United Epitaxy Co., Everlight Electronics C., Tyntek Corp. and Lite vision plan to increase their manufacturing capacities. Everlight predict a 20% rise and Opto Tec a 30% rise of their 1999 revenues this year. An Everlight executive pointed to growing backlog of orders as evidence for the market picking up. In response, the company will prepare for a rise of production from 80 million diodes a month at present to 150 million at the end of this year, and a planned plant expansion will then double this figure to 300 million. This would put the company ahead of the present world leader, Citizen of Japan which produces 180 million diodes a month, the executive said.