According to the latest surveys conducted by WitsView, a subsidiary of Trendforce, large-sized panel shipments fell by 8.9% MoM to 47.59 million units in Feb11.

 

Due to Chinese Lunar New Year, there are only two and a half weeks of working days in February. Besides, as usual there have been labor shortages before and after Lunar New Year in Mainland China. In addition, this Lunar New Year came earlier on the calendar than last year; therefore stock preparation among downstream customers took place in advance in January such that the shipment of large-sized panel is greatly reduced in February. On the other hand, the introduction of Apple iPad products have been well received by consumers prompting all major brands to jump into Tablet PC market leading to continuous growth of shipment of Tablet PC panels.

 

Application-wise, the shipment of TV panels is around 14.57 million units with the MoM regression of 5.1%; the shipment of monitor panels is around 14.46 million units with the MoM regression of 15.7%; the shipment of Notebook panels is around 12.75 million units with the MoM regression of 7.3%; the shipment of Netbook panels below 12.1” is around 3.10 million units with the MoM regression of 15.3%. Only the shipment of Tablet PC panels remains strong at 2.69 million units with the MoM growth of 19%.

 

The world has been under the effect of the trend of political revolution in Mid East since the first quarter of 2011. Surging price of petroleum and all kinds of daily necessities have gradually brought global inflation to the surface. Although the new models for this spring from all brand name producers have been put on shelves, the end market demand is still in ambiguous atmosphere with all kinds of environmental uncertainties. Therefore, all brand name producers must be much more careful with their supply chain management. Currently the capacity utilization rates among panel makers remain relatively high. Considering the production line renovation among some makers have come to an end and newly added panel production line in the second quarter, panel price and supply-demand mechanism will face significant pressure if panel makers do not pay enough attention to allocation of production capacities.