Early Panel Pricing – April
Estimating panel price m/m increases has been a crapshoot for the last few months, with actual increases surpassing even some of the wildest expectations. Over the last few weeks things have become even more complicated with substrate glass, polarizers, display driver, and a variety of other semiconductor related shortages. While these might limit display output in terms of units, it has the opposite effect on panel prices, giving rise to further panel price increases, in this case tangentially related to demand. Based on the evolving nature of the semiconductor issue, a boost in more ‘traditional’ demand from industrial display consumers, and perhaps a slight easing of COVID-19 related demand, we expect the net result to be an increase in monitor panel prices of between 3.5% and 5%, a 3% to 3.7% increase in notebook panel prices, and a 3% to 5% increase in TV panel prices.
In our estimation, if one were to remove any vestiges of component shortages, we would expect less of an increase in all three categories, and perhaps the beginning of a less frenetic stance from panel buyers, but reality bites and the shortages remain for now. Interestingly we have noticed a few comments from panel producers or assemblers indicating their concern over double or triple ordering, which has been swept under the rug until recently, with panel producers and semiconductor foundries enjoying the high utilization rates, but concern is one thing and changing the system is another, so we expect few will do anything to address the problem until it is no longer a problem.
In our estimation, if one were to remove any vestiges of component shortages, we would expect less of an increase in all three categories, and perhaps the beginning of a less frenetic stance from panel buyers, but reality bites and the shortages remain for now. Interestingly we have noticed a few comments from panel producers or assemblers indicating their concern over double or triple ordering, which has been swept under the rug until recently, with panel producers and semiconductor foundries enjoying the high utilization rates, but concern is one thing and changing the system is another, so we expect few will do anything to address the problem until it is no longer a problem.
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