TrendForce: January Large-sized Panel Shipment Dipped 13% MoM with Tablet Showed Deepest Drop

According to the survey for January 2014 by WitsView, the display research division of the global intelligence provider TrendForce, the large-sized panel shipment for January attained 64.07 million units, dipping 13% MoM with most makers’ panel shipments for January showing drops while only SDC, BOE, and SHARP having reverse growth. The demand for February is expected to soften constantly for all panel applications and the overall large-sized panel shipment will stumble 10%. The TV panel will continue to decline 5%, while the monitor and NB panel shipments trim 3% and 8% respectively and the tablet panel shipment still declines around 20%. 

Tablet panel faces inventory adjustment with a 20% monthly drop for January

With the slow season effect and the Lunar New Year holidays pausing for the moment, TV brand clients followed the trend and adjusted the inventory, leading to the LCD TV shipment of 17.41 million units in January, dipping 12% MoM. The monitor panel market was also influenced by the slow season, only the 23.6” and 24” showed stronger shipment momentum, and the total shipment came to 12.52 million units, declining 9% MoM. The NB panel products suffered from the continuous unbalanced demand and supply for the 15.6” and 14” due to some panel makers’ back-end labor shortage and panel makers staying conservative on low-end NB panel supply, and the overall January NB panel shipment reached 14.83 million units, declining 9% MoM. In the tablet panel market, after a restocking peak in Q4’13, brands including Apple, Amazon, Google entered the inventory-adjustment phase and white-box brands’ demand weakened, the January tablet panel shipment was only 19.34 million units, declining 20% MoM.   

According to WitsView senior research manager Jeffy Chen, most makers’ panel shipments for January showed drops while only SDC, BOE, and SHARP had reverse growth. SDC was mainly supported by its own brand’s panel orders of TV and tablets of Galaxy Tab/Note series, BOE’s business has demonstrated its G8.5 advantage to produce 7” and 10.1” tablet panels while being helped by Samsung’s certain low-end tablet orders. SHARP’s TV panel unit benefitted also from Korean clients’ rising orders. The three makers’ 7”-and-above panel shipment growth attained 9%, 24%, and 11% MoM respectively.

Taiwan makers lead the way in under-50” 4K2K TV panel segment, seeing proportion rise

For the 4K2K TV panels, Chen says Taiwan stayed ahead of all makers in the 2013 4K2K TV panel segment and enjoyed a combined market share of 76%. Besides its early development of the products, it led to launch the under-50” products to meet the Chinese market’s demand. Other makers were trying to catch up in the 2^nd half of last year, and based on WitsView’s survey, the mid-sized 4K2K TVs, such as AUO’s 42”, LGD’s 49”, SDC’s 40”/48” and CSOT’s 49”, started to ship in small amount in January 2014, lifting the 4K2K panel proportion of the under-50”(50” excluded) to 34% in Jan. 2014 from 26% in Dec. 2013. “The shipment proportion will continue to rise with the emerging demand for the May 1^st holidays in China, and diverse makers’ competition will also deepen the panel price cuts, which is positive to promote the mid-sized 4K2K TVs,” indicates Chen.

Figure 1: Jan. Large-sized LCD Panel Shipment (K units)

Source: WitsView

Figure 2: 4K2K LCD TV Panel Proportion by Sizes

Source: WitsView