Taiwan-based touch panel maker Yong Fast Optoelectronics released its first-quarter 2011 financial report at an investors conference on April 26, with figures all dropping on quarter and on year, and gross margin in particular slipped 4.8pp and 14.3pp respectively.

Apart from the impact of appreciation of the NT dollar against the US dollar, the decrease was mainly due to low yields in the process of transforming manufacturing of resistive touch panels to capacitive ones, company chairman TJ Lin pointed out. The transformation is to meet growing demand for capacitive touch panels, including competition for orders from Apple.

Capacitive touch panels accounted for 55% of first-quarter 2011 revenues, while the revenue proportion for resistive touch panels stood at 40% as compared with more than 60% in the preceding quarter, Lin indicated. Of the first-quarter revenues, 80% came from shipments of small-sized touch panels used in smartphones and 75% from three main clients, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and HTC.

Young Fast is expanding its domestic and overseas production capacities, with total monthly capacity for small-sized touch panels to be hiked from 12 million units currently to 15 million units in June and further to 20 million units in the second half of 2011. Medium-sized models will rise to 500,000 units by the end of 2011.