“Looking at February, large-size panel shipments have been scaled back because of the Chinese New Year holidays that resulted in fewer work days during the month,” said Iris Hu, research manager for WitsView. “The earthquake that struck southern Taiwan on the 6th also disrupted the operation of Innolux’s fabs. Hence, the total monthly shipments will drop by about 3% from January.”

Hu added that demand remains weak in all applications. TV panel shipments are expected to fall by 5~6% monthly in February, while notebook and tablet applications will respectively register shipment declines of 3~4%. The overall inventory level of monitor panels has been low versus other applications, so monitor panel shipments in February are expected to hold steady.

TV panel shipments for January totaled 19.59 million units, down 13.8% from the prior month. Innolux and CEC-Panda suffered the largest monthly declines in their TV panel shipments, respectively by 22.3% and 42%. Innolux’s poor performance was due to the absence of 23.6-inch TV panel orders from the Mexican government, while CEC-Panda pulled back their TV panel shipments to minimize the profit loss resulted from price competition and having an inadequate product strategy.

Monitor panel shipments for January fell to 10.18 million units, representing a monthly drop of 17.5%. However, Chinese panel maker BOE Technology (BOE) limited the decline for this application to 2.1% and became the No. 2 monitor panel supplier worldwide for the first time, overtaking Taiwanese competitors AU Optronics (AUO) and Innolux. BOE’s success was attributed to its aggressive pricing and extensive product lineup.

January’s shipments of notebook panels arrived at just 11.97 million units, down 19.8% compared with December. On the other hand, AUO grew its notebook panel shipments by 2.2% against the market headwinds by raising the share of twisted nematic (TN), FHD products for this application. The Taiwanese panel maker was also able to take advantage of its close relations with long-term clients Acer and ASUS.

Seasonal effects caused monthly tablet panel shipments to fall 17.7% to 15.73 million units in January. Innolux’s monthly decline was over 40% due to the panel maker’s decision to reduce shipments to the white-box tablet market. Sharp by contrast registered a massive 47.1% monthly growth in its tablet panel shipments as the Japanese panel maker continued to supply the panel of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro to Apple.