Large-area LCD shipments up 42% in Q2

DisplaySearch's quarterly report on 10-inch and larger (large area) TFT LCDs for Q2 09 stated that shipments reached 130 million units, or a growth of 42 percent over Q1 09 and 10 percent over Q2 08 as shown in Table 1. Together with increase in prices, revenues grew 51 percent q-on-q, but were still down 29 percent y-on-y to $15 billion. Strong market demand in Q2 09 led to a recovery in capacity utilization across all applications.

Samsung Electronics led in large-area TFT LCD panel revenues in Q2 with sales of $4.2 billion, a 27.8 percent revenue share, according to DisplaySearch findings. LG Display was second, with $3.7 billion in revenues and a 25 percent sales share. AU Optronics placed in third at $2.3 billion with a 15.7 percent share, with Chi Mei Optoelectronics closely behind at 15.3 percent share.

In unit shipments, however, LG Display took first place even though Samsung shipped the most by area. On a unit basis, Korea was the largest supplier of large-area TFT LCD panels in Q2 09 with a 49.8 percent share, but was down from 52.2 percent in Q1 09 due to strong shipment growth of Taiwan panel suppliers. Taiwan's share increased from 38.4 percent in Q1 09 to 41.2 percent in Q2 09.

David Hsieh, VP of DisplaySearch said, "We are forecasting that industry utilization will be 87 percent in Q3 09 due to growing orders. In Q2 09 the industry experienced a strong recovery and shipments reached record highs. We expect that strong demand will push panel shipments to another record high in Q3 09. However, strong panel shipments in some cases are due to downstream players piling up inventory, so we believe it will be necessary to watch the supply chain inventory situation closely at the end of Q3 09."

The market research firm also revealed details of its survey of panel makers' shipment targets for Q3 09 through Q2 10. Panel makers are increasing capacity utilization to respond to growing demand and targeting Q3 09 shipments of large-area TFT LCD panels of 152.8 million, up 18 percent from Q2 09. If panel makers reach their unit shipment targets, revenue growth is expected to be 32 percent q-on-q.