TAIPEI, TAIWAN: According to WitsView, the global aggregated large-sized panel shipments in April reached 36.6 million units, dropping slightly by 1.6 percent MoM, but equivalent to an annual increase of 29.7 percent. The increase was mainly contributed by the IT panel segment.

For April, the shipment performance was seen to be roughly the same as in March. Aside from the IT panel sales growth in the emerging markets, the overall market demand has become a bit more subdued. Coupled by the fact that the TV panel segment is still being affected by the slow season, its overall demand remains weak.

Aggregated area shipments decreased by 2.3 percent to 5.6 million square meters. On a yearly basis, this represented a growth of 37.8 percent.

Among the three main applications, for the 30" and above TVs, the shipment volume was relatively the same as last month.

Thus, the aggregated TV shipments only fell slightly by 2.6 percent to 2.8 million square meters. In the NB segment, they were relatively flat, up slightly by 0.4 percent. Finally, monitor panels dropped by 2.3 percent to 2 million square meters.

TV panels
In April, TV panel shipments reached 7.8 million units, down by 2.9 percent MoM. With the market entering the second quarter, which is still considered a slow season for the consumer electronics industry, the TV end market sales are still weak. This can be observed from either a panel price or shipment performance standpoint.

In contrast to the weak demand of the 40" and above panels, due to Sharp's increased 32" TV panel production from its G8 line in an attempt to further boost its market share, the 32" instead saw a slight increase in April, taking up roughly 40 percent of the aggregated TV shipments.

Monitor panels
The aggregated monitor panel shipments in April reached 17.5 million units, down by 2.1 percent MoM. The widescreen panels accounted for more than 67 percent, which mainly stemmed from stable shipments of the 16:9 entry level 15.0"w and 15.6"w to emerging markets. The two took up 4.2 percent of the total monitor shipments.

Meanwhile, the 17" 4:3 format continued to drop, reaching a mere 16 percent. As for the 19"W, the shipment level was roughly the same as last month, where their share was up slightly to 32.4 percent.

NB panels
In April, minimal changes were seen in the NB shipments for April. The figure was up slightly by 0.2 percent to 11.2 million units. After increasing sequentially by 13 percent in March, they remained stable in April. This is due to the rather sufficient inventory levels of ODM/OEMs, and a partial component shortage, thus affecting some NB end product shipments. Despite the stable NB panel shipments, the share of the 14.1"W reached a new historical high, increasing sequentially by 12 percent to 27.1 percent.

WitsView forecasts the NB and monitor panel demand for 2008 to respectively reach 130 million and 197 million units. In the first quarter, IT panel shipments already accounted for 25 percent of the volume, higher than the original projections. 

Further observations should be made on whether the better shipment performance was due to stronger-than-expected projections, or whether an earlier inventory pull-in occurred.

Thus, some of the demand that was supposed to appear during the second and third quarters may have already appeared during the first.

With April still considered a traditional weak seasonality in the consumer electronics industry, aside from a stronger demand from the emerging markets, the other major regions were relatively flat. For May and June, WitsView projects the large-sized panel shipments to increase slightly MoM.