New size TV panels shipments remains strong in December

TAIWAN: New TV sizes continue to be hot topics, while shipments of panels such as 39” and 50” continue to grow in December. Looking ahead into Q1 2012, the total shipment of these two sizes can be as high as 1 million units leading to rather significant benefit for the sales performance of CMI.

MoM regression of 2.3 percent for shipment of large-sized panel in December
According to the latest survey on shipment of large-sized panels in December announced by WitsView, TrendForce’s panel research department, the December shipment of large-sized panels has reached 57.06 million units with MoM regression of 2.3 percent and YoY regression of 8.7 percent.

Along with the hot season stock preparations among downstream customers coming to an end, overall market demands for panels of all applications have began to slow down. In early December the LCD TV panel shipment in China market has supported by a small portion of demand of stocking preparation for Lunar New Year while reaching 15.81 million units with MoM regression of 15.6 percent.

The shipment of monitor panel has reached 16.07 million units with MoM growth of 0.9 percent. The shipment of NB panel has reached 14.86 million units with MoM regression of 10.9 percent. As for the tablet PC, the panel supply for new Apple iPad3 remains limited due to continuous production yield issue.

However, the demand for knockoff tablet PC in southern China remains strong leading to overall tablet PC panel shipment reaching 8.01 million units with MoM growth of 61.9 percent. The shipment of Netbook panel has come to 2.3 million units with MoM growth of 11.2 percent.

WitsView research manager, Jeffy Chen has indicated that, looking ahead to the shipment of large-sized panel in January 2012, the shipment momentum will be suppressed by the lack of specific stocking preparation demand in the market and the reduced working days due to Chinese Lunar New Year Holidays; the MoM regression of 5~6 percent is expected.

In response to this impact on shipment and as the preparation in advance for the February shipment, panel makers have maintained their production utilization rates at the same level as Q4 last year, or even further increased the production utilization rate as the strategic stocking of cell.

However, WitsView has predicted that the demands for regular notebook, monitor, and LCD TV panels in Q1 will drop by 3~4 percent compared to Q4 last year. During this period with slow market demand, lifted utilization rate based on any reason at the supply side may lead to the risk of increase panel inventory, while the original expectation of panel price bouncing back in Q1 will take the blow.

TFT-LCD Panel Shipment in Dec-11 (K units)Source: WitsView, Taiwan.