The Video Game Market Continues to Expand, Driving Shipments of Gaming Monitors to Grow by 40% in 2018, Says TrendForce

Highlights

• Shipments of gaming monitor (with a frame rate above 100Hz) are estimated to reach around 3.5 to 3.7 million units in 2018.
• ASUS, Acer, BenQ, AOC/Philips and Samsung are top five gaming monitor makers by shipments in 2017.

According to the latest report by WitsView, a division of TrendForce, the shipments of gaming monitor (with a frame rate above 100Hz) recorded about 2.5 million units in 2017, an annual growth of 80%. TrendForce forecasts that the shipments will increase by another 1 million units this year, totaling around 3.5 to 3.7 million units in 2018.

Anita Wang, senior research manager of WitsView, points out that traditional LCD monitor market has shrunk year by year since 2010. So vendors have turned to more profitable niche products to maintain or increase the overall revenue. In particular, the gaming monitors have been a niche product with high gross margin. With continuing expansion of video game market and the presence of curved gaming monitors with high performance-price ratio, many LCD monitor makers entered the gaming monitor market.

In 2018, due to the continuing expansion of video game market, the hot sales of first-person shooter games, growing investments from brands, and the emergence of curved gaming monitor, manufacturers have set positive goals for their gaming monitor shipments. In particular, those with small shipments in 2017 are targeting at doubled shipments this year.

ASUS remains the leader in gaming monitor market, with a share of nearly 30%

At present, the gaming monitor market is dominated by Taiwanese brands, which account for more than 70% of the global shipments in 2017. The top five gaming monitor makers by shipments are ASUS, Acer, BenQ, AOC/Philips and Samsung, four of which are based in Taiwan.

Taiwan's video game industry has been developing for a long time, with ASUS, BenQ etc. dedicating to the industry for many years. Together with Taiwan’s strengths in computer hardware manufacturing and AUO’s leading role in high frame rate panel supply for LCD monitor, Taiwanese makers remain competitive in the industry.

As for Korean makers, Samsung recorded significant shipment growth of gaming monitors in 2017. The main momentum came from curved gaming monitors with high performance-price ratio, pushing up the market share of Korean-branded gaming monitors from 5% in 2016 to 13% in 2017.

It is worthy to note that Micro-Star International (MSI) emerged to be a dark horse in the 2017 gaming monitor market. It is known for gaming laptops, with a very complete product line of gaming hardware except for monitors. MSI has gradually improved the product acceptance of its gaming monitors in 2017, and is expected to show strong growth momentum in the future.