With the tremendous decline in the U.S. stock market, Taiwan's stocks also fell more than 100 index points. Nevertheless, the PCB field stayed strong among others in the market; among them, Compeq will begin releasing shipments from April with the appearance of the inexpensive Apple iPad. Although TSMC has suffered due to weakening market performance, it remains fully loaded for the fast deployment of novel semiconductor applications, and the turnover in March is expected to be as high as NT$100 billion.         

        With Apple holding its spring presentation days earlier, the long-awaited inexpensive version of the iPad was finally revealed, which has spurred further drive for suppliers’ operations in Taiwan. Compeq provides high-end PCB of HDI process for the inexpensive Apple iPad, and although a small quantity is being released now, larger amounts are expected to be shipped by April. As Apple products continue to be marketed, the production line of Compeq will start to warm up, and the utilization rate of productivity in the second quarter should gradually increase; the warm-up should also ready itself for the peak season of the Apple phone board. 

       As indicated by institutions, Compeq is likely to benefit from the enhanced design complexity of the substrate-like PCB (SLP) of iPhone models at the latter part of the year. With no risk of price decline with the selling price and the enhanced penetration rate by Android for SLP products, this scenario should help to spur growth.            

        Since TSMC holds the advantages of all the orders for low-, medium-, and high-end smart phones with its fast deployment of novel semiconductor applications, the demands for special-application chips (ASIC) should increase enormously; as a result, the productivity should be fully loaded until the second half of the year. Furthermore, the institutions are most optimistic that TSMC could be reaching the record-high revenue of NT$300 billion in March. TSMC will be first among its peers, with both its revenue and profit once again marking new highs. (Information source: China Times Digital News)