Toshiba wins contract to produce iPhone LCDs

Reuters (via the Nikkei business daily) reports that Toshiba Corp has won a major contract to produce LCD panels for the iPhone. According to the piece, Toshiba will spend about US$1.19 billion to build a new fabrication plant to produce the panels for Apple.

The company's wholly owned unit, Toshiba Mobile Display Co, will construct the facility in Ishikawa prefecture and the plant will churn out low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels, which allow for high-resolution images, the paper said.

Work on the plant is scheduled start early next year, with the production due to begin in the second half of 2011. Toshiba Mobile Display currently makes 8.55 million low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels per month at a similar facility and is projected to double that capacity with the new factory.