With LED backlights more and more used in LCD TVs, Taiwanese LED makers, including Epistar Corp., Formosa Epitaxy Inc. and Tekcore Co., Ltd., have seen a flood of orders in recent months, according to Taiwan Economic News.

Korean display giant Samsung has been actively promoting LED-backlit models this year, planning to push sales of such models to an estimated 2 million units, accounting for 10% of its total LCD TV shipment projection for the year, which means around 2 billion LED chips will be needed by the brand this year alone to reach these targets.

Epistar production lines for blue and red chips are running at full capacity, according to the executives, partly due to orders from Japanese manufacturers of pachinko gaming machines, and partly due to the World Expo 2010 Shanghai, which has boosted demand for large-sized outdoor LED displays. With monthly revenue in April of NT$980 million (around US$29 million), Epistar is to expand its output of blue LED chips to 1.4 billion units this year.

Formosa Epitaxy has seen an influx of orders for blue LED chips from Samsung, boosting its April revenue up 16% from March to NT$137 million (US$4.1 million).

Tekcore, though has not yet directly benefited from Samsung, achieved revenue of NT$98 million (US$2.9 million) in April on the back of the growing demand for LED lighting and LED backlights for notebook PCs and TVs. BY the end of the year, the company plans to achieve a monthly output of 100 million units of blue LED chips.