Hsinchu, Taiwan
AU Optronics Corp. ("AUO" or the "Company") (TAIEX: 2409; NYSE: AUO) today presented at IAFA Tokyo 2002 (Information Appliances Forum Asia) held jointly with CEATEC Japan, the largest IT show in Asia, at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. As the leader in flat panel displays industry, AU Optronics was invited to present the new "Style PC" concept and new technology trends.
IAFA was held for the first time this year. Held jointly with IAFA, CEATEC especially reinforced Internet appliances (IA) technologies and its future trends at the exhibition. Richard Bai, AU Optronics Senior Manager of Marketing Division, presented the topic of "Display for IA Applications" to demonstrate the future trends of IA: "Style PC". The presentation also covered various aspects including display size, resolution, cost, and technology requirements.
AU Optronics indicated that the Style PC could be applied in diverse fields including e-Book for education, Tablet PC for business, IPC (Industrial PC) and Web-Pad for business vertical market application, and I-Mode and Mira for enterprise and personal use. With its wide application fields and functions, the Style PC will become the market trend in the future. Targeting to the Style PC market, AU Optronics is able to utilize its complete product line to provide the full-scale display products for Style PC applications.
The future development for Style PC will toward thinner (less than 1 inch), and lighter (less than 1kg) designs with long life battery (more than 4 hours), touch panel and multimedia application supports including fast response time, wide view angle, and high resolution. Therefore, the display panels for Style PC requires light weight, thickness, high brightness, transflective TFT LCD technology, and integrated displays. The mainstream display sizes for style PC range from 8 inch to 10 inch. Currently AU Optronics offers 8.4-inch and 10.4-inch TFT LCD modules for style PC applications. A new 8.4-inch product integrated with the digitizer will be scheduled to commence mass production at the end of 2002. The product features high resolution to meet with animation viewing needs and can be applied in tablet PC.
IAFA 2002 in CEATEC includes both forum and exhibition. The forum is divided into 3 main topics: technology, application and solution, and the exhibition contains IA Pavilion and IT Korea. In addition to AU Optronics, many Asia IT companies such as Samsung, Toshiba, Microsoft, and ChinaSoft Network all participated in this leading-edge convention.