What They Say
In the course of a recent correspondence with Ross Young of DSCC, he mentioned that sometimes we have referred to forecasts for foldable devices that are higher or different from those from his firm. He pointed out that you have to be careful to properly identify the difference between panels, set production and set shipments (or sales). He gave us the chart below to show the difference in his forecasts this year for the three categories.
What We Think
Ross is correct and over many years we have spent a lot of effort to try to ensure that where we can, we have correctly identified panels and sets, but in the end sometimes we report what others give us and pass on their lack of clarity. Over the years, I trained a number of young reporters and analysts in our Display Monitor newsletter and I lost count of the times I sent articles back to writers with the question “are these numbers for panels or sets?” and then “If it’s sets, is that production or sales”. “If it is sales, is it Sell-in or Sell-out?”.
However, for those that are not used to the kinds of differences in timings, his chart is illuminating. Where a market is seeing strong growth or has quite a long production cycle, there can be a significant difference in the numbers. (BR)
Ross’s chart shows how more panels are made than sets because of time lags in the supply chain
