AOC, distributed in EMEA by MMD, along with the Philips brand, has put out a release bragging about its “faster than the market” growth and claiming 5.2% growth in Q4 2017 over the same quarter a year before.
Analyst Comment
We have our own data, and wouldn’t dispute the number (Display Monitor’s publisher also has publishes market research on the EMEA monitor market). However, the company is really showing how sure it is of its market position. MMD has as its main shareholder, TPV, the Taiwan-based monitor maker, which is by some way the largest in the world. In 2017, the company said that it shipped 43.7 million monitors, down from 44.4 million in 2016, giving the firm 35.4% of the global market
If we go back several years, the BenQ group, like TPV today, was both selling products under its own brands and also through OEMs. However, the big PC OEMs put the company under a lot of pressure to decide if it wanted to compete with them or supply them. They felt that they weren’t sure who they were dealing with. To solve this problem, BenQ split its ODM business out as Qisda and kept BenQ for the branded business.
Up to now, TPV has always been big enough to resist this kind of pressure – OEMs simply believe that they can’t afford to kick the company into touch. However, if more monitor making moves to Chinese ownership, with more panels coming from China, it’s not impossible that they may review the situation, if TPV’s share starts to slip, as it has in TV assembly (where it is just fourth) and Foxconn is clearly on the path to try to develop its vertical integration, then it may find itself vulnerable.
Of course, MMD doesn’t have any responsibility for the OEM business, but it may not be a good idea in the very long term to keep highlighting how much business it is taking from TPV’s customers! On the other hand, the company has done a good job over the last several years, so it’s not surprising that it wants to talk about it.
The data is from TPV’s annual report presentation and is said to be based on IHS and TPV data. (BR)
