August 16, 2001

Taiwan's top three manufacturers of digital cameras - Asia Optical, Premier Camera Taiwan, and NuCm - are currently increasing export shipments to cope with strong demand.

Premier Camera whipped more than 70,000 digital cameras in July, nearly 3.5-fold the monthly average of the first half of the year. Asia Optical is forecast to deliver more than 100,000 units these months

The manufacturers trace this boom to swelling orders from big international OEMs, which are increasingly outsourcing in Taiwan.

Most of the big-name buyers delayed deliveries in the first half of the year in order do use up inventories.

One of the best performers in the first half was Asia Optical, which shipped 400,000 digital cameras in the period, mostly on order of Hewlett-Packard for 1.3 mega pixel models. After a drop to 50,000 in July, the company hopes to be back to 100,000 this month.

Premier Camera delivered only 60,000 digicams each in the first and second quarter. So, the shipments of the first half-year represented only 12% of the company's projected goal of one million for this year.

(In 2000, Premier had delivered about 11 million traditional cameras and 600,000 digital cameras)

NuCams first-half shipments were worse than expected due chiefly to flagging demand from European and U.S. buyers and the introduction of new camera models by its chief rivals in the second quarter.

Generally, Taiwan's digicam industry sticks to entry-level or mid-level models, as the component market for cameras of 3 mega pixel or higher resolution is dominated by Japan.