Gaming is the hottest application for desktop monitors, invigorating a mature product category. Many monitor brands are offering novel features such as curved, slim borders and touch interfaces to provide an immersive gaming experience. Gamers demand high-performance desktop monitors for fast gaming action, as these products enhance gameplay.

IHS Markit tracks shipments of gaming monitors with frame rates of 100Hz and above, in addition to G-sync, Free-sync and others. In the first half of 2017, Asus led gaming monitor shipments with a share of 17.4 percent, followed by Acer at 12.4 percent and HKC with 9.9 percent. The growing gaming monitor market is attracting new entrants, with more than 16 brands competing this year.

IHS Markit forecasts that the gaming monitor market will exceed 1.6 million unit shipments in 2017.

“Gaming applications with frame rates of 100Hz and above are setting the agenda in monitor products today. We expect that more players, including major US and Korean brands, will enter the gaming monitor market,” said Jeff Lin, principal research analyst at IHS Markit.

“Both monitor brands and panel makers are introducing a slew of new features to differentiate gaming monitors, such as quick response time, curved and high dynamic range (HDR) panels — all of which improve the gaming experience,” Lin said.