According to investigations by global market research institute, TrendForce, despite the sudden orders in the first quarter, recovery was not as up to strength compared with the same period a year ago, due to customers' declining desire to replace smartphones. The global smartphone production volume for 1Q19 totaled 311 million units, showing a YoY decrease of 9%. The outlook for 2Q19 indicates that smartphone demand will stabilize, and the traditional busy season for stock-up activities will arrive in the latter half of the second quarter. Thus the global smartphone production volume in 2Q19 is forecasted to register no significant YoY change over 2018, holding steady at the level of 350 million units. TrendForce further forecasts that the global production volume in 2019 will contract by 3.7% from 2018 to around 1.4 billion units.
LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, points out in its latest price report that China's mainstream high-power and mid-power LED package products registered a marginal drop in April, 2019, among which lighting LED package product prices continued their descent through April, with high-power products dropping by around 1%, and mid-power LED products dropping by 1%-4%.
May 10 th sees the US-China trade dispute escalating yet again as the US continues to hike tariffs on US$200 billion worth of Chinese imports, going from 10% to 25%. TrendForce points out that TVs , monitors, notebooks and other display products were not among the US$250 billion worth of goods hit by the 25% tariffs, thus the current impact on panels and the display industry remains to be fairly limited.
Due to frictions from the US-China trade dispute, China's two DRAM giants are showing clear signs of slowing. According to research by DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), which forms the main bulwark of NAND flash development in China, will be mass producing 64-layer Xtacking 3D NAND products this year end as scheduled. YMTC's capacity expansion in 2020 is projected to impact supply and prices in the global NAND flash market.
According to the newest observations by WitsView , a division of TrendForce , China's high-generation panel manufacturers are expanding at an alarming rate. Additionally, average TV sizes continued to expand, and production capacities of super-wide 2500mm substrates that may be economically cut to 65 inches and 75 inches for polarizer suppliers were not ramped up in time, causing polarizer supply to tighten this year. The glut ratio dove under 5% for the first time in four years and came to a mere 3.3%.
