LCD Revenues to Fall for First Time Ever, Research Finds

The LCD TV category will see its worldwide revenues drop year-over-year for the first time ever, according to a new forecast.

DisplaySearch's revised "Q4 '08 Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report" expects LCD revenues to fall 16 percent year-over-year in 2009, with total TV revenues falling 18 percent. The LCD market will hit $64 billion, with the overall TV market totaling $88 billion.

The key reasons for the expected drops include:

• falling TV prices
• LCD shipment growths down 7 points
• PDP shipment growths down 6 points

DisplaySearch is even going as far as saying "2009 will be the most difficult year yet for the TV industry and supply chain."

The LCD market is expected to

• hit 102.2M units in 2008, a 29% Y/Y growth
• top 119.9M units in 2009, for 17% Y/Y growth
• grow 45% Y/Y in 2009 in emerging regions, lower than the 68% Y/Y growth in 2008

The PDP (plasma) market is expected to

• grow 24% Y/Y to 13.9M in 2008
• grow 5% Y/Y in 2009 to 14.6M units
• be affected by fewer manufacturers in the category and aggressive pricing

This is DisplaySearch's estimated TV revenues by category for the next few years:



For 2009, DisplaySearch expects global TV shipments to drop to 205.3 million units from 206.4 million in 2008.

The drop in shipments and revenues will cause leading brands to increase their market share, according to DisplaySearch. This will affect lower-tier vendors.