The sale of PDP-TVs in China jumped from 111K units in 2Q’07 to 231K units in 3Q. That’s a whopping 107% increase, and enough to bring PDP-TV sales in the 32-inch and over categories to 12% of LCD-TV sales in those same categories, according to our massaging of numbers supplied by DisplaySearch.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

The surge was driven by the introduction of 32-inch PDP-TVs in China, a size that soared from 0% of the PDP-TV market in 2Q to nearly 26% in 3Q. With prices of about 4,570 yuan (US$618), 32-inch PDP TVs were about 20% cheaper than comparable 32-inch LCD TVs, reported Rebecca Kuo and Greg Wu in Digitimes. Chinese TV vendors Hisense, Haier and Changhong, among others, marketed aggressively and wound up shipping nearly 60K units in the quarter.

Shipments of larger PDP-TVs were also up, with 42-and 43-inch sales increasing from 83K units in 2Q to 117K units in 3Q, and shipments of 50-inch units up 92% to 50K units, according to DisplaySearch.

We believe the 32-inch PDP-TVs are based on LG’s 32-inch almost hi-def panel. Although a few columns shy of the 720p HD pixel format, the panel produced good looking images when we saw it last month at FPD International in Yokohama.

Making small HD PDPs is challenging, but the motivation is great. Thirty-two inches is the most popular size of HDTV, and until now LCD technology has had that size all to itself. The Chinese introduction has been highly successful, and LG will be rolling out its own 32-inch PDP-TVs in more than two dozen countries around the world. The Brazilian model was launched in October.

Chinese TV makers are bullish about plasma generally but are frustrated by what they describe as an unstable supply of plasma panels. They attribute this to the fact that most suppliers of the panels are also set-makers, and they believe the suppliers make sure their own TV production lines are adequately supplied before they sell to outside customers.

The solution to that perceived problem is domestic supply, and Panda Electronics Group (PEG) plans to begin manufacturing plasma display panels (PDPs) through a subsidiary by the end of this year, with a goal of producing 120,000 50-inch panels a year in the project’s first phase. The PEG subsidiary started test runs in early November and says it will begin volume production of 1330×768 PDPs by the end of this year.

The company is developing its panel technology in cooperation with Southeast University in Nanjing. Professor Xiaohua Li, Deputy Director of Southeast University’s Display Technology R&D Center, told me at LatinDisplay 2007 in Brazil earlier this month that initial production will be on a pilot line with a capacity of about 10,000 units a year.

Now, where do you think PEG’s PDP manufacturing expertise is coming from? I’m not allowed to say, but perhaps you can make some shrewd guesses.

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