S Korea seen as major power in TFT-LCD sector

"Taiwan still has a chance to beat South Korea in the LCD arena."

Frank Wang, a flat panel analyst at Morgan Stanley

South Korea, Taiwan's arch rival in the flat-panel industry, is expected to make up over half of the world's thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal-display (TFT-LCD) panel shipments by 2010, a South Korean market watcher said yesterday.

South Korea, currently the world's largest TFT-LCD manufacturer, expects to continue to dominate the market worldwide with more than a 50 percent share in 2010, up from 37.8 percent this year, said Koo Ja-poong, vice president of the Electronic Display Industrial Research Association of Korea.

South Korea will offer a highly competitive panel price of US$7 per inch at that time, given its efforts to invest in developing next-generation products and to localize the manufacture of key components, materials and equipment to reduce costs, Koo said.

He made the remarks at a forum held by the semi-official Asia Pacific Industrial Analysis Association in Taipei.

The South Korean-Dutch joint venture LG Philips LCD Co is the world's largest TFT-LCD maker, with 23.4 percent of total revenue worldwide in the first quarter of this year, followed by Samsung Electronics Co's 21.8 percent and AU Optronics Corp's (友達光電) 13.4 percent, Koo said, citing figures from Display Search.

OPPOSING VIEW

Back in March, Display Search Taipei branch president David Hsieh (謝勤益) predicted that Taiwan could one day outrank South Korea in TFT-LCD manufacturing, with 43.7 percent of total shipments worldwide versus South Korea's 41.1 percent.

"Taiwan still has a chance to beat South Korea in the LCD arena," said Frank Wang (王安亞), a flat panel analyst with Morgan Stanley, who was another speaker at the forum.

Taiwanese LCD panel makers can still leverage the LCD TV market, which is expected to jump to some 100 million units in five years, to secure their market position, Wang said.

However, Taiwanese LCD players would need to enhance their acquisition power over motherglass, a key component, in order to strengthen their competitiveness, he said.

WEEDING OUT THE WEAK

With the threshold of investment to develop next generation fabs amounting to several billion US dollars, only the top five players are expected to survive, Wang said.

The survivors are expected to have strong pricing power in the face of their downstream buyers and could enjoy a gross margin of between 25 percent to 30 percent in the next five years, he said.

RETAIL PRICES

Meanwhile, Koo expects LCD TV retail prices to drop by around 75 percent to US$299 for a third-tier brand 32-inch LCD TV in 2010, which is expected to boost the penetration rate to more than 45 percent worldwide.

For Taiwan, LCD TVs are expected to became the market mainstream, and a penetration rate of more than 50 percent by 2008, with a 32-inch LCD TV priced at around NT$16,500, said Peter Chen (陳其宏), general manager of digital media business group at BenQ Corp (明基).

BenQ reported the highest nationwide market share in this niche for the first half of the year.