Panels drop by 23.9pc YoY in Dec. 08

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: According to WitsView’s survey, worldwide large-size panel shipments reached 25.15 million units in December 2008, down slightly by 2.6 percent MoM. On a YoY basis, they slumped by 23.9 percent. Although the general end market demand remained uncertain, a stronger pull-in effect occurred during December.

This stemmed from the fewer working days in Jan09 and downstream vendors’ preparations for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year sales promotions. Coupled by the year-end inventory accounting, panel suppliers aggressively tried to clear away their unsold inventory in minimizing their losses. These factors led to a better-than-expected shipment performance during Dec' 08.

NB (12.1” and above) panel shipments reached 7.94 million units in December. As a NB panel inventory built-up occurred, due to weak end market sales in 4Q08, the Korean players aggressively tried to reduce their stock by securing more panel orders. This resulted in a small 1 percent MoM NB panel increase in December.

In the monitor segment, shipments were down by a mere 0.1 percent MoM to 10.45 million units. As mentioned above, shipments were underpinned by the panel makers’ inventory clearing. Finally, TV panels experienced the biggest drop among the three main applications, where it fell 10 percent MoM to 6.76 million units. The fall was mainly attributed to the persisting macroeconomic woes and sluggish sales of higher-end TV sets.

The aggregated large size panel area shipments in December dropped from November’s 4.72 million square meters to 4.28 million square meters, down 9.2 percent MoM. On a yearly basis, a double digit decline continued, tumbling by 20.8 percent. NBs increased by 2.1 percent MoM to 544K square meters, due mainly to the panel makers’ inventory clearing. TV and monitors were down respectively by 14.8 percent and 1.2 percent to 2.48 million and 1.25 million square meters.

Generally speaking, in the wake of the deteriorating global economy, the smaller and cheaper TV products have become a popular choice among price-conscious consumers. Falling demand of the more expensive bigger-sized TV sets has thus led to a lower consumption of large-sized glass substrates.