Shipments of 9″-and-above LCD panels from Taiwan-based manufacturers were better than expected during the fourth quarter of 2017, according to Digitimes Research. This new data reveals that Taiwan’s shipments of large-size panels totalled 237.8 million units, a year-on-year growth of 2.7%.
Panels for notebook applications saw the biggest growth of 8% in 2017, while panels for monitors experienced a decline of 2.2%. Shipments are expected to fall 6.4% during the first quarter of 2018, lower than the 8.4% decrease seen in the same quarter last year.
Analyst Comment
One of the factors in the relative strength in notebooks is that Samsung Display has exited the notebook panel market and has a forecast for no notebook panel shipments in 2018 according to our friends at IHS. Innolux and AUO were both around 40 million units for notebooks in 2017, while BOE was up at around 53 million for notebooks. (BR)
