Innolux denies supplying cellphone panels to Apple

Taiwan's Innolux, the world's number two monitor assembler, confirmed yesterday it will start supplying cellphone panels to Nokia but denied it will supply touch-screen panels to Apple.

"We only said we would start supplying cellphone panels to Nokia. We did not say we would supply cellphone panels to Apple. The press said it. All we can say is that currently Apple is not our customer," said Thomas Hsu, chief financial officer (CFO) of the InnoLux Display Corp.

Last week Taiwan press reports quoted Hsu as saying InnoLux would begin supplying cellphone panels to Nokia in the first quarter of 2008.

Press reports also said InnoLux would begin to supply touch-screen panels to Apple's iPhones in the second quarter of 2008, posing competition to German touch-screen panel maker Balda.

InnoLux is the world's second-largest LCD monitor contract supplier with a global share of 17 per cent in the third quarter of 2007 as well as a a major major of thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD).

An affiliate of Hon Hai, which supplies cellphone handsets to Nokia, InnoLux has rented an 18-hectare plot of land in the Chunan Base of Hsinchu Science Park to build its sixth-generation panel plant. The plant will begin operation in the second quarter of 2009 and produce 90,000 sheets of mother glass per month.

Mother glass refers to panels before they are cut into small panels.