LCD monitor sales to grow, and BenQ may profit

Liquid-crystal-display (LCD) monitor vendors that have strong backing from panel makers have greater advantages than vendors without backing, and these advantages will become even more pronounced in the second half of the year, an industry insider said yesterday.

"Local LCD monitor vendors who do not have constant support from panel makers may face a potential dearth of supply amid increasing popularity of LCD monitors," said Danny Yao (姚鴻州), BenQ Asia-Pacific Corp's (明基亞太) president of sales for Taiwan.

Samsung Electronics Co, which is the fourth-largest vendor in Taiwan's LCD monitor market, has great potential for growth, as it has the second-largest LCD manufacturing business in the world, Yao said.

BenQ, the nation's leading LCD monitor vendor, has secure supplies from its affiliate, AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), which is also the nation's largest flat-panel maker.

Taiwan is expected to consume some 1.4 million monitors -- including 1.2 million LCD and 200 million CRT (cathode ray tube) models -- this year, with BenQ hoping to grab up to 25 percent of the market, Yao said.

Yao made the remarks at the company's launch of a new 17-inch LCD monitor model yesterday. The unit is priced at NT$21,900, boasts a 12-millisecond response time -- meaning enhanced picture clarity -- a built-in 300,000 pixel web camera, and a three year warranty.

The vendors will start promoting the 16-inch by 9-inch widescreen LCD monitors next year, following reduced cost for panels. The product is expected to become popular during the second half of next year and the first half of 2006, Yao said.

"We expect that the widescreen LCD monitor will take a market share of 30 percent at that time," he said.

However, Ken Ko (柯維華), an analyst at local research house Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所), was not as optimistic as the vendor about the market acceptance of the product.

Ko said most of the monitors are used to read documents or surf the Internet, neither of which requires fancy exteriors.

"I do not expect the predicted acceptance by the market will be so strong in the next three years," Ko said. That BenQ would make a statement like that was simply to generate interest and thus stimulate demand, he said.

BenQ, which is also the world's second-biggest LCD monitor maker, hopes to ship up to 10 million units this year.

Global LCD monitor shipments are expected to exceed CRT monitors this year to account for 60 percent of global monitor shipments of 81 million units, up from 72 million last year, according to statistics provided by the Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心).