Meko Press Releases |
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European Flat Panel TV Market Set For Huge Growth
DATE: 5th May 2005
The latest forecast for the European TV market from Meko calls for a rapid increase in sales of flat panel TVs and is ahead of previous estimates. "We have raised our LCD and plasma TV forecasts substantially this time based on the latest supply side projections. The estimates are still conservative when compared to the expectations of the set makers and in comparison to the potential capacity available in the market in the coming years", noted Pete Gamby, research director at Meko. "There was a huge uptake in demand in Q4 2004 for the flat panel TV technologies as prices fell and with no significant panel price increases expected, we can only see demand continuing to grow", he added. "More and more existing CRT sets are likely to be replaced by flat panel products and for this reason we believe the overall market in all regions could grow more quickly than has previously been the case". The expectation is for the flat panel TV market to grow to about 6.3m units in 2005, to 8.8m in 2006 and then again to more than 11m in 2007. Annual growth of more than 30% is anticipated in both the LCD and plasma TV sectors. But the market is still going to be dominated by sales of CRT TVs. At the end of 2004, conventional (or FST) CRTs accounted for more than half of the CRT TV market but this is expected to decline to around 36% of that sector by the end of the forecast period which is Q4 2007. With price pressure from LCD and plasma, the largest set sizes will disappear very quickly so sales of 36" sets are forecast to decline to almost zero by the end of 2006. The forecast for sales in the 32 flat CRT category is reasonably bullish as the new slim CRT sets from LG and Samsung and others, including Thomson, will extend the life of this segment despite competition from LCD. However, the market price point for slim CRT is going to be much lower than the early indications given by those set makers. For the LCD TV market, the trend is clearly towards larger screen sizes and sales of 26"/27" and 30"/32" sets are growing very rapidly. "These size classes fit quite well with people's experience of buying CRT TVs", notes Gamby. From the component point of view there is little difference in the cost of making 26" or 27" panels and the same is true for the larger sizes on the latest generation LCD fabrication plants. So the market should naturally adopt the slightly larger screens in future if there is little or no price difference. The average price of a 26" and 27" LCD TV is basically the same at the moment and historically 27" sets have actually been priced lower than 26" models. The difference in market price for 30" and 32" LCD TVs is more marked at the moment. The smaller sets are selling for around 1,600 on average in Europe and 32" sets are promoted at around 2,100 but this gap closed to almost zero in December 2004. The current price difference is due to a combination of more aggressive pricing on low specification, "feature free", 30" sets from unknown and private label suppliers combined with the fact that the majority of 32" sets are offered with high specifications and performance and by the top brands such as Sony, Philips and Sharp. Sales of larger LCD TV sets will grow very rapidly as prices fall and it is expected that shipments of >25 sets will increase from 2.3m units in 2005 to 5.5m in 2006. The plasma TV market is still and will continue to be dominated by 42 products. This screen size will increase its share of the market from around 80% at the moment to nearly 85% by the end of the forecast period. There is forecast to be no increase in the share of the market taken by 50 products despite some very aggressive price changes. The limitations of house size and the extra weight of this size of set restrict their appeal in Europe. The other TV type covered by the research is rear projection. Whilst this is a relatively small part of the market for Europe, it is expected to show good growth. Sets based on Texas Instruments' DLP technology are continuing to show good sales growth and sales of this type of set are to expected to rise to about 85,000 units in 2005 and to more than 180,000 in 2007. The news is not so good for another of the reflective microdisplay technologies though. Meko does not expect to see any significant sales for LCOS RPTV sets despite the promise of excellent picture quality that this technology has. With Philips out of the market and none of the other rear projection set makers getting solidly behind any LCOS solution, its likely that sales will be very limited and destined only for consumers that want large format and high resolution without going to front projection. JVC is expecting to promote D-ILA products in Europe at the end of 2005 but overall, sales are forecast to be very low. --- ends --- Notes to Editors: For more information about Meko and DisplayCast please contact Pete Gamby E-mail: peteg@meko.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1276 22677 If you would like to receive press releases from Meko as soon as they are available, please send a blank email to: ListServer@meko.co.uk, with the subject line 'Subscribe MekoNews'. |