Samsung sells a million TFT panels in April

Since June last year, volumes manufactured have increased by 42 per cent and this makes it the market leader in panel production, it claimed.

It said that a big shortage of notebook panels means that it will ramp up production, while sales of 17-inch panels for desktop monitors now account for around half of all of its sales.

The 15-inch panel market is of less interest to Samsung because margins on those products are far less than on the bigger screens.

Many of the Taiwanese monitor factories are accounting for sales of 15-inch TFT-LCD panels, soaking up demand from the marketplace.

It said that starting from the second half of this year it will start production of its fifth generation TFT-LCD production lines.

The firm produced figures showing that in January 2000 it produced 10,000 "large" panels, ramping to 500,000 units in June of 2001 and now one million. µ