A power outage at one of Nippon Electric Glass Co’s (NEG) fabs last week would lead to a further increase in prices of flat panels used in televisions, monitors and PCs through next quarter, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday.
The company’s manufacturing equipment was damaged during the five-hour shutdown on Thursday, NEG said in a statement on its Web site, adding that it is trying to restore production as soon as possible.
The incident disrupted one of the glass substrate supplier’s production lines in Japan and would reduce production of glass substrates for large-sized panels by 2.5 percent next quarter, TrendForce said in a report.
That could strain the already tight supply of large panels, as supply of TV panels has been restricted for the past six months, it said.
“The NEG incident has exposed the industry to a rising risk of widening supply shortage. That allows panel makers to be more optimistic about price quotes,” TrendForce said.
Large panels for TVs and monitors would see price hikes of 4 to 5 percent this month from a month earlier, compared with an earlier estimate of 2 to 3 percent, the researcher said.
TV panel price hikes could extend into next quarter, but the increases should be mild, as most panel makers are making lucrative profits from selling TV panels and would not want to stifle demand from TV makers, which are still making losses, TrendForce said.
Prices for panels used in 19-inch monitors would increase 2 to 4 percent this month from a month earlier, it said.
TrendForce retained its forecast that laptop panel prices would increase 3 to 4 percent this month, as the impact on the supply of glass substrates for notebook computers would be less severe.
Should NEG’s production allocations not work smoothly, the prices for laptops might climb a further 1 or 2 percent, TrendForce added.
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