Moon Festival and National Holiday LCD TV sales grew by 13.6 percent from last year

TAIWAN: According to WitsView, a research division of Trendforce, and Chinese research institute Σintell, LCD TV sales between the Moon Festival and National Day holidays( from September 5 to October 9) reached 5.98 million units, which was an increase of 13.6 percent compared to last year. As this was slightly better than original projections, the previous accumulated inventory of China’s TV vendors could be cleared more effectively.

WitsView assistant vice president, Burrell-Liu, indicated that total LCD TV shipments are expected to hit 2.01 million units in 2011. Demand from China will reach 4.1 to 4.3 million units, taking up approximately 21 percent of the global share. During the week-long National Day holidays, Sony and Sharp concentrated on promoting low-priced CCFL and LED models. Their respective shipments jumped by 20 to 23 percent over the same period of last year.

Meanwhile, Korean players’ strategy focused on highlighting their 3D TVs. However, as 3D TVs are still relatively more expensive, the sales growth was less than 8 percent. Thus, their overall sales performance was worse than expected. Finally, China’s TCL, Skyworth, Changhong and Hisense all posted an annual sales growth ranging between 17 percent and 22 percent. As for Konka and Haier, their growth was slightly lower at around 10 percent.Source: WitsView, Taiwan.

Between the Moon Festival and National Day holidays, China’s LED TV shipment ratio reached 59 percent. From Jan. ’11 to Sep. ’11, the overall LED TV penetration rate in China climbed to 43 percent, 1 percentage point higher than the 42 percent global average. As for 3D TV shipments, the penetration rate of China’s top six brand vendors during the month-long holiday promotions was 23 percent. From Jan. ’11 to Sep. ’11, China’s overall 3D TV penetration rate was 8.5 percent, also slightly higher than the 8.3 percent global average.

Skyworth and Changhong’s respective 3D TV shipment ratio reached 34.4 percent and 25.8 percent. Separately, beginning from Aug’11, amid the SG (shutter glass) camp’s aggressive price promotions, it has rendered the shipment ratio between SG and PR (pattern retarder) to shift dramatically from 22:78 in 2Q11 to 49:51 in Sep11.

In 3Q11, the quarterly aggregated shipment growth from China’s Top 6 TV brand vendors reached in the range of 26 percent and 29 percent. In 4Q11, it is projected to grow by another 16 percent and 19 percent from last quarter.

The currently lowered inventory levels should spur TV brand vendors to begin pulling in inventory earlier in preparation for the 2012 Chinese New year holidays. If panel makers can continue to effectively control their utilization rates, coupled by persisting lower inventory levels, hopefully, it will stimulate some form of long-overdue recovery in 1Q11.