According to the survey on global shipment of large-sized panel in Q2 by the research institute WitsView under TrendForce, there is a QoQ growth of 12.7% and YoY growth of 8% reaching 177 million units. However, WitsView also found that the YoYs of Q2 shipments of Netbook/LCD monitor/large-sized NB/LCD TV panels in Q2 are 4.9%/-0.1%/-5.7%/0.01% respectively excluding the strong growth of Tablet PC. With the original forecast of growing demands for all kinds of application products, such weak performance of shipment YoY is an indication of cool-down demands for all related LCD devices among all major consumer markets in the first half of the year due to debt crisis in Europe and US and the inflation issue. With the over-supply of panels, downstream brands are confident that there will not be any panel shortage issue. Although panel price remains rather low recently, panel procurements in the first half of the year have been rather conservative due to ambiguous market demand and tighter control over inventory levels among downstream channels and brand name makers.

 

Table1 : TFT-LCD Panel Shipment in 2Q11 (K units)

Source: WitsView

 

In terms of applications: TV market in Q2 driven by the sales in China during May Day Holidays has been supportive to panel shipment leading to QoQ growth of 6.1%. The QoQ growth of monitor panel shipment is only 1.8% under the effects of offseason and prior inventory. The QoQ growth of Notebook panel shipment is 11.8% due to a QoQ growth of 7% of downstream shipment of entire machines. The QoQ growth of shipment of Tablet PC has been terrific at 108.3% stimulated by the introduction of new models from Apple and non-Apple vendors. Although the market of Netbook below 12.1” has been affected by Tablet PC, second tier white-box makers have been installing Netbook panels on white-box Tablet PCs such that the QoQ growth of Netbook panel shipment has been driven to 13.3%.

 

By observing the regional shipment of large-sized TFT-LCD panels in 2011, in Q2 Taiwanese panel makers such as AUO and CMI have all raised production capacity utilization rates for actively improving overall profit performance after being stimulated by market demands in China. They have been actively securing their relationships with downstream customers such that customer orders have not been shifting to their competitors. As a result, the overall share of panel shipments of Taiwanese panel makers only drop slightly to 40% from 40.5%, while the overall share of panel shipments of Korean panel makers has slightly climbed from 51.7% to 51.8%.

 

As for the shipment ratio of TV panels, due to the popularity of Taiwanese panels in China panel market, the re-stocking among customers in China market after May Labor Day Holidays, and the secured tie between Taiwanese panel makers and downstream customers, the market share of Taiwanese panel makers has bounced back to 41.9% from 41.1%, while the market share of Korean panel makers have also bounced back to 50.7% from 49.2%. Japanese panel makers failed to actively restore their utilization rates due to earthquake and inventory issues such that their market share has dropped from 9.1% to 5.8%. BOE has aggressively attacked the market share of TV/IT panel markets based on its Gen6 line driving the growth of shipment ratio of China panel makers from 0.6% to 1.6%. As for the shipment ratio of monitor panel, Taiwanese panel makers still hold the leading position in spite of the shipment ratio sliding from 45.6% to 43.8%. As for the shipment ratio of Tablet PC panels, along with CMI securing iPad2 panel order, and ensuing introductions of own brand Tablet PCs among non-Apple makers, the shipment ratio of Taiwanese panel makers has grown significantly from 9% to 21.2%.