With practically every other flat-panel maker out there cutting back production like it's going out of style, it's no shock that rumors were a-flowin' that LCD maker Chi Mei Optoelectronic would soon be following suit. After suffering a $125 million loss in Q3 and facing a grim Q4, the outfit has proudly proclaimed that it has zero intentions of shutting down factories or otherwise lowering production in order to counter the slump. 'Course, CMO did trim output by around 20% last quarter, but in an official filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, it clearly stated that it currently had "no plans to close factories as reported by the media." So, what exactly is it doing? Encouraging employees to take unpaid vacations. Interesting.

[Image courtesy of UberGizmo]

Call us crazy, but we're thinking the OLED battle is totally on. With the novelty of Sony's XEL-1 behind us and the lust for bigger screen sizes completely consuming our minds, we're drooling at the mere thought of a 25-inch OLED panel that checks in at just 1-millimeter thick. Taiwan's Chi Mei EL was caught showing off the long-awaited display at the FPD International exhibition in Japan (last year's image shown), where it explained to onlookers that the marvel featured a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 and was capable of displaying 16.7 million colors. Regrettably, there was no mention of an expected release date, but we'll be watching at CES 2009 just in case (one of our) wildest dreams come true.

[Via OLED-Display]

Chi Mei Optoelectronics, one of the world's leading manufacturers of TFT-LCDs, is licking its wounds after announcing a staggering $125 million loss in Q3 of this year. Of course, it's not like this was difficult to see coming -- after all, those plummeting LCD prices that we consumers love so dearly have to be detested somewhere along the supply chain. At any rate, CMO's profit suffered a " three-fold decline compared to that in the same period last year," and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight for the free fall of LCD panel prices. President Ho Jau-yang asserted that the company would "review and modify its operational orientation" while "safeguarding liquidity" as it rode out the storm. We could be badly off, but we'd say the real beatings are yet to come.

[Image courtesy of GigaComputers]

That glut of LCDs sitting on the shelves has some manufacturers at odds on how to react, with world #2 LG cutting production by 10% (with plans to raise it again in September), while the number one manufacturer Samsung is going to keep pushing them out as fast as it can, aiming for double digit sales growth this year. That doesn't mean it's not concerned about falling demand and too much supply, but it looks like all those partnerships mean its going to have someone to sell all its screens to at the end of the day. Don't expect that attitude to crash prices anytime soon however, as OEMs like AUO and CMO are following LGs lead and cutting production temporarily.

Read - Samsung Elec says has no plans to cut LCD output
Read - LG Display to cut output by 10 pct in downturn

Enticing consumers to pick up a new HDTV by throwing in a fairly attractive bonus is quite an antiquated (but still incredibly effective) trick, and it seems as if Chi Mei is resorting to such tactics to move its 42- and 50-inch 1080p LCD HDTVs. Reportedly, the group is bundling the aforementioned sets with Xbox 360s during the 2008 Taipei Game Show, but we've no idea if it plans on keeping the promotion alive after January 28th comes and goes. Now, if only there were an HD DVD add-on thrown in, we might consider ourselves sold.

[Via Akihabara News]

Despite 1440p not actually being an official spec just yet, Chi Mei Optoeletronics has officially announced it will be mass producing a 47-inch Quad HD LCD panel in the second quarter of 2007. We've been drooling over the lovely 56-inch 3,840 x 2,160 resolution -- and apparently delayed -- panel CMO has been showing off all year, it looks like your first chance to surpass 1080p will come in a 47-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 resolution package. Its 3.68 million pixels are 1.78 times as many as are in current 1080p (1,920 x 1,080) screens, along with 450 nits brightness, 1,500:1 contrast ratio, 90% NTSC color saturation and a 6.5ms response time. Dual-link DVI and HDMI 1.3 connections have WQXGA resolutions like this in mind, so keep an eye out for a PlayStation 3 software update to 1440p, the only true definition of HD. The 56-inch panel is pictured above, hopefully we'll get a look at this panel later this week during the FPD International conference in Japan.


[Via Digitimes]

Just because they don't have a shiny new 8G plant yet isn't stopping CMO from getting in on the 52-inch 1080p LCD battle. HDTVs from Sharp, Samsung and Sony are already on sale or coming soon, and Chi Mei Optoelectronics, plans to join them in the first quarter of 2007. While you may not know the name, their panels are in many HDTVs you do know like Westinghouse and Toshiba. They'll be showing their 52-inch LCD next month at FPD International 2006 in Japan, and plan to upgrade production to 180,000 glass substrates by December. Their current 5.5G plant can only get two 52-inch LCDs from each substrate however, while the newer plants produce six at a time. Either way, next year will have a lot of players competing in the 40 to 50-inch LCD space driving prices down, we see what they've been able to do at the 47-inch tier. It's not all good news though, CMO may be having trouble mass producing the 56-inch 3,840×2,160 resolution LCD they showed off last year. With four times as many pixels as current 1080p screens, they promise all new debates over how much resolution is actually necessary...whenever the technology is actually released.

Everytime we hear about QuadHD, we just picture four high-def panels held together by duct tape in a two by two configuration. Luckily for you, we're not HDTV designers. We'll leave that to the folks at Chi Mei Optoelectronics since they can get 3840x 2160 resolution on a single LCD panel and will be modeling it at CeBIT next month. Before we get the "that's only double the res of 19801920x1080i" comments, make sure you do the math both on the x- and y-axis, as our geometry teachers loved to say.

Granted, we don't yet have a signal for a QuadHD TV and it's likely we won't for a while since we're working on the final three years of our DTV transition, but could you just imagine playing Fight Night 3 on an 8.3 megapixel screen? We'd be down for the count for sure.

Read [via i4u]