Present Situation and Prospect of TFT Panel in 2016

The global TFT panel industry is cyclical. Taiwan’s TFT panel is the best in 2007. After suffered a financial crisis in 2008, many manufactures to stop the construction and expansion of production lines. In 2012, the TFT panel factories of mainland began to raise, the market of global panel started to decline, and the panel overcapacity began to emerge. For the overcapacity, Japanese and Korean enterprises face to strong competition. In addition to Samsung closed the LCD panel production lines (lately, heard Samsung will close the 7-generation line, if it is true, then that’s mean Samsung only has one LCD production line). Beginning of this year, JDI closed 3.5 generation and 4.5 generation production lines. CPT Technology closed 4 generation and 4.5 generation lines in the second half of 2015, retaining only 6^th generation line, which exacerbated the tight panel supply. According to Sigmaintell statistics show that China’s smart phone panel shipments grew 23.3% YoY, supply and demand imbalance makes the low-end stock status continues.

Industry participants said that as the closed LCD factories cannot resume production, in addition, the TFT panel manufacturers continue to increase OLED development, but due to fewer OLED production line, the output capacity is still relatively small, coupled with to top product transformation, the price increases will cannot resolved in short term, the price of small and medium size LCD will continue increase. At present, there is booming demand for downstream manufacturers, this trend will continue into the second quarter of 2017.