Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) cut its forecast for global LCD TV shipments by 3 percent to 208.8 million units this year, reflecting the impact of an uncertain European economic recovery and China’s suspension of subsidies for TV purchases.
WitsView, TrendForce’s flat-screen research division, now forecasts a mere 1.1 percent annual growth from last year’s 206.5 million units. The Taipei-based market researcher had expected the world’s TV makers to ship 215.5 million units this year.
The downward revision came after global LCD TV shipments in the first quarter fell 26.7 percent sequentially to 45.2 million units.
This quarter, global shipments are expected to grow by between 5 and 6 percent sequentially, WitsView said in a report.
“TV makers are just about doing OK in the first half of the year,” WitsView analyst Burrell Liu (劉陳宏) said in the report.
“Seasonal demand in the second half is uncertain in the face of an unstable global economic recovery and China’s withdrawal of subsidies for TV purchases,” Liu added.
This could add greater risk to the global LCD industry, as TV makers become more cautious about panel inventory buildup in the second half of the year.
“As LCD panel makers are running their factories at high utilization rates and shipping as many panels as they can, panel buyers [TV makers] are gaining the upper hand on pricing,” Liu said.
Utilization rates at Taiwanese panel manufacturers, including Innolux Corp (群創光電) and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), are currently higher than 90 percent.
However, Chinese TV brands are increasingly buying LCD panels from Chinese firms rather than from Taiwanese suppliers, it said.
With the rise of Chinese TV brands, the global TV market saw major changes in the first three months of this year, WitsView said.
Chinese brands TCL and Hisense (海信) saw their global rankings rise to No. 3 and No. 4 respectively after shipping 8.5 percent more TV sets, overtaking Japan’s Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp, the report showed.
In total, Chinese TV brands accounted for a 28 percent share of the global TV market last quarter, WitsView added.
South Korean TV brands, led by Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics Inc, saw their market share increase to 33.3 percent last quarter, while Japanese brands maintained an 18.8 percent share, the researcher said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure