July 11, 2000

With price cuts and international oversupply of TFT-LCDs, the OEM price of made LCD monitors has been dropping in the past few months, industry sources said Tuesday.

Many international LCD manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. placed orders for Taiwan-made LCD monitors with the OEM price of less than US$600 per unit. The Taiwan's upstream TFT-LCD manufacturers, which now sustain their OEM price at US$650 per unit, are expected to quote below US$600 per unit by the fourth quarter, industry sources said.

Taiwan's TFT-LCD plants have improved their overall product perject rae, but the international OEM price has kept dropping. Most local TFT-LCD manufacturers' production volumes exceeded their real OEM orders in the first half, thus paving the way for the price cut in 15 inch LCD monitors, which registered an average price of below US$900 per unit recently.

Over the past three months, the international OEM price for 15 inch LCD monitors was set at between US$670 and US$620 per unit. Heightened demand is expected soon, with more short dated delivery but huge volume orders expected.