Chuntex Electronic

Chuntex Electronic Co., Ltd., operating as CTX International, is a Taiwanese company that makes computer displays. It started in 1981, initially building cathode-ray-tube monitors only for the domestic market. In 1986, the company went global by setting up CTX International, its U.S. and primary export arm, based in City of Industry, California.

European offices were later opened in the Netherlands and Watford, UK, which together employed 75 people in 2004. From the late 1980s through the late 1990s, Chuntex bought several overseas monitor and hardware firms, helping it become a top brand and OEM monitor supplier. In the early 1990s, it established the Opto subsidiary to make LCD monitors and projectors.

In 1995, the U.S. accounted for 62 percent of Chuntex’s exports, followed by Asia at 19 percent and Europe at 15 percent. Sales of CTX products jumped from US$15.5 million in fall 1992 to US$27.2 million in fall 1993. The company posted a US$11.5 million profit on roughly US$250 million in sales in 1998, and by 1999 it had 5,000 employees worldwide.

In August 1994, Chuntex bought a 51 percent stake in Veridata Electronics, a Taiwanese computer company, aiming to acquire its laptop production lines and workforce. After increasing its stake, Chuntex began selling computers under the CTX brand and as an OEM for other vendors, including CompUSA in 1996. Although CTX was a small player in the PC market, it initially made decent profits from these systems, which included the EzNote laptops and Nutopia desktops.

However, in April 1999, the company reported losses equal to about half its market capitalization, largely blamed on its laptop business. These losses pushed Chuntex into the red, making it the first major Taiwanese company to go bankrupt in 1999. It soon filed for reorganization protection in Taiwan. A few months later, it announced it would stop making complete computer systems and focus solely on monitor production, though it continued selling some systems built by other companies and rebadged as CTX machines.

CTX is still active in Taiwan.