Global TV shipments are forecast to decline 5.8 percent annually this year, as consumers delay spending on TVs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics and the European Championships, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday.
Shipments are expected to fall to 205.2 million units this year, compared with 217.8 million units last year, the researcher said, adding that it might further revise down its projection, if the pandemic continues wreaking havoc on the global economy.
The researcher trimmed its TV shipment forecast by 8.6 percent for the current quarter to 44.6 million from an earlier estimate of 48.8 million units, with Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Skyworth Group Co (創維) suffering the brunt.
Xiaomi, the world’s fifth-largest TV supplier, with more than 70 percent of its sales derived from the Chinese market, is forecast to see TV shipments plunge 50.9 percent sequentially to 2.1 million units this quarter, TrendForce said.
“Large-scale lockdowns in China have depressed demand in China at the beginning of 2020, as it strove to curb the pandemic spread,” it said in the report.
Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics Co could see less drastic declines of 27.9 percent and 20.4 percent to 10.1 million and 6.38 million units respectively this quarter, it forecast.
However, as Europe has become the new epicenter of the pandemic, Samsung, LG, Sony Corp and Royal Philips NV could become the latest victims of the pandemic in the second quarter, as Europe accounts for more than 30 percent of their shipments, TrendForce said.
“The pandemic in March dealt a blow to consumer confidence in Europe and the US amid a financial meltdown,” it said.
The weakening demand for TVs spells trouble for flat-panel makers, as TV vendors are forecast to cut orders by 8 to 10 percent in the second quarter, TrendForce said.
As a result, panel prices are expected to fall again, after mainstream 32-inch and 55-inch TV panels saw 10 percent increases this quarter, the researcher said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
RSS