The market demand of global panel industry begins to pick up after experiencing sustained downturn from 2011 to the first half of 2012; the competitive landscape will gradually be rewritten. From the market share of global panel enterprise perspective, the panel enterprises in South Korea accounts for 50% of worldwide market shares; Taiwan's panel industry drops to 30%; Japan's panel share down to 10%; while panel companies from Chinese mainland rises to 10% from less than 1% in 2005. 

After six quarters of loss, the profit-making of panel manufacturers start to pick up from the third quarter of this year, where Samsung, LGD, BOE achieved positive net profit, mainly making a breakthrough from five aspects: first, reduce investment plan, limit production capacity, decrease market supply and effectively alleviate the downward pressure of prices. According to Sigmaintell data, the capacity utilization of worldwide more-than-five-generation-line panel factories year-over-year fell by 15%-20% in the first quarter of this year; in particularly, high-generation line has low capacity utilization; second, develop new products, transfer capacity to higher-profit products. On one hand, launch 39、48、50 inch and other more productive new inch product; on the other hand, move capacity to high-profitability products, such as increasing the proportion of smartphone in 5-generation line; raising the production proportion of Tablet PC in 6 and 8.5-generation line, improving the profitability level high-generation line. Third, develop new technology, decline capacity loss and maximize the use of idle capacity.

Looking ahead of 2013, the demand scale of global large-size panel will reach 830 million, a year-over-year growth of 7.8%. Large-size panel will show features of the overall balance in supply and demand, and local tense. First of all, there is no significant growth in worldwide production capacity, panel manufacturers will focus on the direction of adjusting capacity structure and increase the overall profit. As for the market segments, 2013 will see slight oversupply in tablet panel supply.

Tablet PC is still the major driving force for global large-size panel growth in 2013. With the continuous expansion of Android camp as well the introduction of Wins8 operating system and its application Surface, Tablet PC market will form four companies competing situation, the growth of demand scale also will gradually slow down. In 2013, the year-over-year increase rate of global Tablet PC market will slow to 37.8%. The display market in 2013 will continue downturn; the supply and demand will be relatively balance, local appears tense. In terms of notebook application, there will have the overall balance in supply and demand, high market expectation and possible oversupply. On the TV panel side, the supply and demand is overall balanced, and structural shortage problem still exists.

In 2013, global panel factory will adopt two type development modes: some will take horizontal integration, structural adjustment based strategy, including Sharp, Panasonic, AUO will introduce strategic partners and cut bad asset by capacity integration, technology licensing; other will actively expand capacity, represented by Hon Hai, Sony, TCL and BOE.

In addition, new application and new technology will become important weapons stimulating market demand. In terms of large-size, copper process Qxide will enhance product performance and future development direction; as for small size, LTPS and AMOLED increasingly become the protagonist of technology competition.

Analytics from  Baitron Electronics