More LCD TV Using LCD Monitor Panels

April 7th, 2008

by David Hsieh, Vice President, Greater China Market

In the LCD TV market, when everybody’s focused on the 32”, 40” and 50” segments, there is a rapidly growing trend which deserves our attention: LCD TV adapting LCD monitor panels. There are usually clear distinctions between LCD monitor panels and LCD TV panels: LCD monitor panels are lower in brightness because they’re usually much closer to our eyes, but are higher in resolution to accommodate PC information. Sizes are usually smaller (such as 17” to 24”) and the color gamut doesn’t need to be as high since they’re typically not used to play video signals or motion pictures. Simply put, LCD monitor panels are usually recognized as a lower-end display than the “noble” LCD TV panels. However, there are several factors that push LCD TV manufacturers to adapt more LCD monitor panels to LCD TVs, especially the smaller sizes like 15”, 19” and 22”.

  1. Cost: The cost of the LCD monitor panels is lower than LCD TV panels.
  2. Availability: Although panel makers are building bigger, such as with Gen 6, Gen 7 or even Gen 8, they have been shifting most LCD TV panel development resources to 40” and above. The 15” to 22” LCD TV panels are starting to phase out from the panel makers’ roadmap. We see many brands like Samsung, Philips, Toshiba and LGE buying LCD monitor panels for their below 26” LCD TVs.
  3. For some newcomer brands or retailers’ house brands, to have a low price 19” or 22” LCD TV helps them enter the market rapidly and take some “eye share” and market share. We have been seeing brands like Polaroid, Westinghouse, Insignia (Best Buy’s house brand) and Sanyo doing this.
  4. For seasonal promotions, many brands love to dump lower-priced 19”W LCD TVs (using LCD monitor panels, of course).
  5. Panel makers love to sell these panels into the LCD TV market to offset the oversupply possibilities in the LCD monitor panels sector.
  6. For the second or third LCD TV at home, people often choose smaller sizes such as 19”W or 22”W, and are usually willing to sacrifice some picture performance for price.
  7. In China and other developing countries, when people are starting to abandon their old 20” CRTs, it seems like a good choice to buy a 22”W LCD TV which has a similar screen size to their old bulky CRT TV.

So, how far it can go? Can the demand of the below 26” LCD TV continue to grow when 26” and 32” models’ street prices continue to drop? Meanwhile, can this tendency influence the overall supply and demand of the TFT LCD market? Will American and West European end users start to buy second or third LCD TVs for bedrooms or kitchens after they install big 40”+ screens in the living room? And will households in developing countries continue to buy these smaller sizes?

These are all the questions that DisplaySearch is trying to answer. At this time, we forecast there will be 13 million units of LCD monitor panels used in LCD TV for 2008, which is a strong 90% growth from 2007. The strongest demand of this special segment comes from 19”W with 1440 × 900 resolution. Yes, they’re 16:10 mainstream LCD monitor panels, and they’re largely used in 19”W LCD TV. At DisplaySearch, we believe this special category (LCD monitor panels used for LCD TV sets) will grow by 24% every year from 2007 to 2012, given the demand from both of developed and developing countries.

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