Leading Chinese TV panel suppliers surpass 40% market share in Q1 2019
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Editor
| 06 May 2019

Research from WitsView has revealed that as Taiwan, Korean and Japanese panel manufacturers ease production pressures by adjusting product sizes, China's panel manufacturers have taken the lead in keeping TV panel shipments rising.

Even though in all the first quarter of the year was a characteristic offseason as always with demand clearly dropping, the freeing up of production capacity by the Chinese firms saw total TV panel shipments reach 70.02 million units, a year-on-year growth of 4.2%.

In the analyst’s TV panel shipment rankings for the first quarter, BOE's production capacity skyrocketed since its first Gen 10.5 line began mass production in early 2018, allowing BOE to come out on top in terms of 65-inch and 75-inch sizes, pushing down Korean Manufacturers. Apart from super-large sizes, the increase in demand for 32-inch panels 1Q allowed BOE to grow offseason shipments against the trend by 5% quarter-on-quarter to 14.27 million units, a 14.9% year-on-year growth, safeguarding its position as leading TV panels supplier.

WitsView added that a recovery in demand will be aided by the stock-up period for new products and China's 618 Sale entering the second quarter. Besides CSOT's Gen 11 production capacity, expanding month by month, new production capacities also include HKC's Chuzhou Gen 8.6 production line, which is expected to begin mass production imminently.

By contrast, Korea’s LGD's TV panel shipments declined by 11.6% in the first quarter, with production influenced not only by the decrease in demand offseason, but also by the adjustments made to its product portfolio of current Gen 7.5 and Gen 8.5 lines. Shipments for products 55 inches and above are expected to grow by over 10% quarter-on-quarter, starting with the second quarter.

After Innolux's cleared out its mainstream 39.5- and 50-inch inventories in 2018, its TV panel shipments reached 10.74 million units in Q1 2019, a quarter-on-quarter decline of 13.7% but a 16.5% growth year-on-year. The migration of 49-inch demand to 50-inch products this year pushed Innolux to become the top supplier of 50-inch panels for global brands. Thus despite entering the Q1 offseason, 50-inch shipments only dropped slightly by 0.7%, but exhibited a large growth of 38.1% year-on-year.

Going forward the analyst expects the average size of shipped panels for the second quarter of 2019 is to grow by nearly an inch quarter-on-quarter, reaching 46.5 inches, driven in part by Gen 10.5 lines' focus on super large sized panels, and an increasing proportion of panels 50 inches and above from China's, Taiwan's and Korea's manufacturers. This will likely be accompanied by a growth in total shipments by 5.5%.