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The latest smartphone market research by TrendForce shows that global sales have been fairly tepid in the first half of 2017. Besides the traditional off season effects, consumers have held off purchases in anticipation of future products with more exciting features. Still, total smartphone production volume for this year’s first half expanded by 7% compared with first half of the prior year, totaling nearly 650 million units. Collectively, Chinese brands posted a year-on-year growth in their production volume during these six months, while non-Chinese brands together recorded a year-on-year decrease.
The latest research by WitsView, a division of TrendForce, finds the global shipments of LCD TV panels totaled 123.35 million units for the first half of 2017, amounting to a tiny dip of 0.1% compared with the same period a year ago. Since Samsung Display (SDC) closed its Gen-7 fab L7-1 at the end of 2016, TV brands since the first quarter have been vigilant against the supply tightening in the mid-size segments and kept stocking up. Their demand was strong enough to offset the traditional seasonal effect during the year’s first half.
A major bottleneck in the commercialization of Micro LED displays is the mass transfer of micron-size LEDs to a display backplane. Research by LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, reveals that many companies across industries worldwide have entered the Micro LED market and are in a race to develop methods for the mass transfer process. However, their solutions have yet to meet the standard for commercialization in terms of production output (in unit per hour, UPH), transfer yield and size of LED chips (i.e. Micro LED is technically defined as LEDs that are smaller than 100 microns). These research findings can be found in LEDinside’s 3Q17 Micro LED Next Generation Display Industry Member Report: Analyses on Mass Transfer and Inspection/Repair Technologies.
The U.S. has further lowered the antidumping and countervailing (AD/CVD) rates imposed on Chinese and Taiwanese solar imports in 2012 and 2014, according official statements on the recent AD/CVD reviews conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Many PV cells and module manufacturers have managed to evade U.S. trade barriers by setting up factories in third-party countries, majority of them in Southeast Asia. However, TrendForce’s green energy division EnergyTrend believes that the reduction of AD/CVD rates will have an impact on the global market this third quarter.
The overall production capacity for large-size LCD panels rose above the expected level in the first half of 2017 despite seasonal headwinds, according to research by WitsView, a division of TrendForce. Panel suppliers actually found their processing lines fully loaded and were compelled to make some of their newly added production capacity available ahead of schedule. WitsView estimates that the global production capacity for large-size LCD panels in terms of total glass input area will increase by 5.8% annually in 2017 to reach 218.3 million square meters. This figure is 0.3 percentage point above an earlier estimate. Supply will become an important factor in determining the course of the panel market during second half of 2017, especially in the fourth quarter.