Prices of LCD panels used in TVs are expected to fall by 1 to 2 percent in the first half of this month, as Chinese TV brands are cautious about inventory buildup for the Lunar New Year holiday, NPD DisplaySearch said yesterday.
“Panel makers still feel pressure to push out panels by lowering prices, but the price erosion will be modest in the first half of December,” the researcher said.
The decline is smaller than that in the second half of last month. The prices of mainstream 40-inch and 42-inch panels are expected to drop by 1 percent to US$145 per unit in the first two weeks of this month. They declined 2 percent in the second half of last month.
Despite falling prices, NPD DisplaySearch said it did not see clear signs that panel makers would reduce utilization rate.
The nation’s two biggest LCD panel makers, Innolux Corp (群創光電) and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), said they would flexibly adjust the equipment loading rate to cope with market demand in this quarter’s traditionally low season.
LCD panel makers have mixed market outlook for next quarter. Some flat panel makers are conservative, while others expect supply constraint to be repeated next quarter because of long lead-time for new models, NPD DisplaySearch said.
The latest pricing information from WitsView, a TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) LCD research team, showed that TV panel prices would drop 0.2 percent to 1.4 percent in the first half of this month from two weeks ago, with the average price for 40-inch and 42-inch panels unchanged at US$142 per unit.
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last