Coronavirus: flat panel display market set for unprecedented decline in 2020
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 15 April 2020

As the Covid-19 outbreak impacts worldwide TV and smartphone demand extremely negatively, undercutting panel sales, global unit shipments of flat-panel displays (FPD) are expected to plunge by as much as 11.1% says research from Omdia.

In its Display Long-term Demand Forecast Tracker, Omdia notes that the market has been undergoing low-single-digit increases and decreases since the financial crisis in the second half of 2008 caused shipments to drop by 8.85 in 2009. However, the double-digit drop expected this year would represents an unprecedented rate of decline.

“The coronavirus is spreading throughout the world at a faster pace than expected,” explained Ricky Park, director of display research at Omdia. “The pandemic is starting to directly impact application market demand as stores close and lockdowns become widespread, weakening consumer accessibility. In particular, TVs and smartphones—products that rely heavily on retail consumer demand—will find it difficult to avoid the direct impact of coronavirus and will be hit more severely than other areas by the contagion.

As a result, Omdia has slashed its forecast for display demand for LCD-TVs and smartphones in 2020. The analyst calculates that FPD shipments are set to total 3.2 billion units in 2020, down from 3.6 billion in 2019 with LCD-TVs display shipments to fall by about 9.5, while smartphone to drop by 10%. Omdia has also reduced its 2020 projections for global flat-panel display area shipments and revenue by 4.5% and 4.0% respectively compared to the previous outlook.

Looking at the way in which different countries are set to fare, Omdia said Korean brands have been aggressively withdrawing from their LCD production lines and shifting to advanced displays. It believes that this should result in a significant drop of small/mid-size TV panel production in Gen 7 and Gen 8 fabs and should eventually spur a boost in sales growth for TV panels sized 60-inches and larger.

Despite Omdia’s original outlook for AMOLED demand being downwardly revised, it feels that demand growth in terms of units will still be relatively high, at 9.5% in 2020. Omdia forecasts OLED TV panels to grow approximately by 35.9% and that the demand for AMOLED for smartphones will grow by approximately 9.0%.

Despite the gloomy outlook for 2020, the Display Long-term Demand Forecast Tracker predicts the market will recover in 2021 as the impact of the Coronavirus recedes, with shipments rising by 9.1% during the year.