Public Display Growth Continues After Q2 Uptick

Public display (PD) shipments grew 16% YoY in Q3’14, says DisplaySearch. LCD PD shipments were up 18%, while plasma shipments were ‘negligible’ due to the market exit of many plasma vendors.

Following the start of an improvement in PD performance in Q2’14, QoQ growth reached 3% in Q3 – the market’s highest sequential growth rate for six consecutive quarters.

The average size of PDs continues to grow and now sites at 48.9″ worldwide. 65″ and 70″ shipments increased due to growing demand for interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in the Chinese and Eastern European education markets.

Rapidly-falling prices encourage a move to larger screen sizes. 60″+ PDs are now replacing tiled 46″ and 47″ LCD units. Ken Park of the firm said, “Steep discounts offered by consumer TV brands during the holiday season in the United States are expected to put heavy price pressure on public display set manufacturers”. The trend will be especially relevant to 60″+ displays, and may encourage B2B vendors to have promoted lower-cost entry-level PDs in Q4 to ward off competition from consumer units.

Growth remained high in emerging regions, while mature regions fared worse. Largely due to the Fatih Project in Turkey, Eastern Europe was the world’s leading PD market in Q3, with a 204% YoY growth rate. IWB demand and the lagging effect of the World Cup in Brazil pushed LATAM to the next-strongest region, with 35% growth. MEA followed with 15%, while China’s growth slowed, following two quarters of double-digit increases.

The top five brands still dominate the public display market, with more than 50 percent of the total global shipment share, while the share for non-branded public displays remained steady, at approximately 40 percent of the market.