Backed by a six-month panel price hike, as well as panel makers’ efforts to reduce costs, panel makers’ profitability has reached its peak this year. According to forecast from WitsView, top-tier panel makers will witness excellent profitability across all three applications this quarter.
Judging from the evolution of material cost to ASP ratio, it is evident [...]

Taipei, June 8, 2009—According to WitsView’s analysts, the rapid utilization rate increases by panel makers has cleared away the previously accumulated glass substrate inventory in recent months. The current glass substrate output is now immediately consumed by eager buyers. As the capacity increases from the furnaces can not keep up with the rising glass substrate [...]

Taipei, May 25, 2009—Following the notable inventory replenishments during 1Q09, it started to cool down a bit during Apr09. By also taking into account the continued monitor panel price increases, these developments should help further shed light on the extent of downstream vendors’ overbooking and the actual market demand. Amid a possible slowdown in the [...]

April 20, 2009—With the brand TV manufacturers all introducing new LED TVs, LED TV has gradually become one of the trump applications in LED industry. LEDinside projects that if all LCD TVs feature LED backlight, the consumption of LED in TV section would be 8 times larger than that in the 1-billion-a-year cell phone market.
On [...]

Taipei, April 7, 2009—In the start of 2009, large-sized panel shipments finally started to show encouraging signs of growth again. Moreover, as inventory in the general supply chain remain low, rush orders continue to be placed, thereby fueling optimism toward the TFT-LCD market outlook. Indeed, considering the low shipment base level in Dec08, low utilization [...]

Taipei, April 7, 2009—For Apr09, as downstream clients continue to replenish their inventory and prepare the launch of new models, coupled by the still tight supply of some components, panel prices will remain on an upward trend. Demand for the 40W and below TV panels has been strong, especially in the China local sales. This [...]

Panel makers huge financial losses triggers another component price war, says WitsView
Taipei, February 1, 2009—As panel makers gradually disclose their 4Q08 financial results, it is seen that even the first tier players have started to post huge financial losses. Obtaining further material costdown has become one of the most efficient ways to improve businesses. According [...]

Taipei, January 22, 2009—According to WitsView, the Top 10 SIs shipped a total of 7.9 million monitors in December. This amounted to a MoM drop of 11.8%. In the wake of the continuous macroeconomic woes, the decline was mainly attributed to the SIs’ inventory clearing since November, along with December’s year-end inventory accounting. The sharp [...]

Taipei, January 21, 2009—According to WitsView, a total of 405 million large-sized panels were shipped in 2008. Compared to the 371 million figures in 2007, this amounted to a YoY growth of 9%. TVs increased 19.4% YoY to 97.47 million units. Meanwhile, NB grew 17.4% 127.75 million, while monitors slipped by 0.6% to and 179.46 [...]

Taipei, January 20, 2009—According to WitsView, with the panel prices in the three main applications staying flat in 2HJan, the likelihood of prices hitting bottom in Jan or Feb has greatly increased. This has spurred downstream clients to prepare their inventory.

Since the Taiwan and China panel makers’ sharp production cutbacks in 4Q08, the average utilization [...]