A few weeks after Sharp agreed to sell a two-thirds stake to Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision) for $3.5 billion, the Taiwanese company is starting to integrate Sharp's display business with Innolux, Foxconn Taiwanese display arm.
Innolux AMOLED prototype, 2012
Today we hear a report from Taiwan that Innolux's chairman Tuan Hsing-chien has resigned from his roles at Innolux, and will head to Sharp to help integrate the two display makers. Tuan will help Sharp and Innolux focus on IGZO backplanes and OLED diisplays - aiming to enhance the competitiveness of Sharp's LCD business - and find opportunities for cooperation between the two companies.
Tuan says that both IGZO and OLED are a "major consideration for the investment in Sharp". Tuan also reveals that Innolux now aims to start OLED mass production in 2018 (in its 4.5-Gen fab), and Sharp will start mass production a year later (2019) in a 6-Gen fab.
It has been a long while since we heard of any OLED updates from Taiwan's Innolux. Innolux has been promising small scale OLED production back in 2012, but this never materialized. In February 2016 Tuan said that Innolux expects OLED demand in high-end smartphones to take off in 2017, and that Innolux continues its flexible OLED R&D.
Last month it was reported that Foxconn aims to invest a total of $1.8 billion in OLED technologies following the Sharp acquisition. Foxconn aims to become an OLED supplier to Apple.
