China touch panel makers are continuing to merge with one another in order to bump up their competition in the market, which has now brought down the number of touch panel makers in China from over 1,000 to roughly 500-600, according to Digitimes Research.

The merge is due to strategy purposes and even more so due to economic reasons. O-Film for example was able to gain more funding through merges and as a result has expanded production capacity, improve its technology, drive down costs and bump up its overall business.

Digitimes Research expects this trend to continue in 2014 as demand for increased production capacity and lowered costs continue to occur.