Whether demand for TVs recovers this year in Europe will determine the outlook of the global TV panel market this year, a senior analyst at Omdia said on Wednesday.
Inflation and the war in Ukraine have dented demand for TVs in Europe, Omdia senior principal analyst JinHan Ricky Park said Korea Display Conference Spring 2024 held in Seoul.
The hope is Euro 2024 and Paris Olympics events that will be held from June to August, he said.
TV set makers have put orders in advance to display panel makers in preparations for promotions ahead of these events, Park said.
This was a much faster timeline than the previous two years, indicating that TV set makers are hoping that sales increase in Europe along with these events, the analyst said.
According to Park, the inventory level of TV set makers and TV panel makers was at a “historic low”, though speculative demand and prices of TV panels were increasing faster than expected in the first quarter of this year.
These expectations must be translated to real demand in a timely fashion or it could hurt the overall TV panel market during the second half of the year, the traditionally high demand season for the panels, he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese display panel makers are lowering the operation rate of their liquid crystal display (LCD) panel factories to prevent price drops, Park said, and they are unlikely to increase this again in the short term as prices remain low.
Last year, OLED TV panel shipment was also noticeably low, he said, with both LG Display and Samsung Display operating their OLED lines at below 50% operation rate.
For large OLED TV panels to grow, there need to be at least 10 million units of OLED TV sales per year, Park said, which will require Chinese TV makers and not just the top TV companies Samsung, Sony, and LG.
