the objective of further expanding this position

The business year 2011/12 closed in June with the best result since the company was founded. Combined sales with subsidiary company Optronik Berlin rose by 27% to 30.3 million euros – following on from 23.9 million euros in the business year 2010/11. The company achieved improvement in the area of display metrology. A number of major orders from leading brand manufacturers for consumer electronics had been drivers for this growth.

Toshihiko Karasaki, President of Konica Minolta Optics, sees the acquisition of the company with a high global reputation as aligning with the Group’s strategy: “Our goal is to have a leading global position in all our corporate divisions and to integrate international talent within our group. Instrument Systems is the best company in LED lighting measurement to consistently implement this strategy. Together, we now cover all segments of display and light-source measurement and we are positioned as number one in this area.” Konica Minolta Optics and Instrument Systems will cooperate closely on product development in future with the objective of further expanding this position.

PIDA project manager Murphy Lin says that the results of the survey suggest that the island’s optoelectronics manufacturers are becoming guarded about the direction in which their industry is going. “This survey reflects the rather low confidence of the industry in Taiwan,” Lin comments. “It’s not good news, but there are still promising developments in each sector.”

For the LED sector, streetlights offer a good market. The state-run Taiwan Power Corp. recently cancelled a subsidy it had given to city agencies to help pay electrical bills for streetlights, after the central government announced that another planned hike in electricity fees would be delayed because the previous hike had alleviated the losses suffered by the company due to a long-term price freeze. The cancellation is expected to accelerate the move by city agencies to install LED streetlights.