WitsView has released its latest estimates, predicting that China will soon surpass South Korea to become market leader in the large-size LCD panel industry. These new figures predict that China could hold a 50% market share by 2020.
According to WitsView, China’s capacity will hit 35.7% in 2017, a growth of 5.6% year-on-year.
More bad news for South Korea is that Taiwan is also set to grow beyond its capacity, pushing the country down to third place. Analysts estimate that Taiwan’s capacity share will rise to 29.8%, a growth of 0.9% year-on-year, while South Korea drops to 28.8%, a decline of 5.3%.
Anita Wang, senior research manager at WitsView, said:
“Both domestic and foreign panel makers continue to build and expand their fabs in China because of the country’s enormous market and the financial support from the Chinese government. At the same time, the capacity share of South Korea has shrunk. Samsung Display (SDC) closed its Gen-7 fab L7-1 at the end of 2016, and both SDC and LG Display (LGD) have lowered their Gen-5 capacity”.
While South Korea is reducing its production capacity, manufacturers in other regions such as China, Japan and the U.S. are heavily investing in 10.5-Gen fabs.
You can read the full report at the TrendForce website.
Analyst Comment
It’s strange to see the US featuring on this kind of forecast! I remember hearing the Korean ministry of Industry saying at an IMID conference that Korea would dominate the LCD industry with more than 50% share. I was amazed that at one point, this was achieved. It showed the value of coordination around a common objective, although it didn’t always mean profitability. Checking back in my database, it was interesting to see that at IMID in 2005, Nikkei was forecasting that UltraHD would be important by 2010. As it turned out, it took twice as long. I guess that might suggest that 8K might be a very long way away, in volume, anyway. (BR)
