Meko Press Releases

Public Display Market Continues Steady Growth

DATE: 19^th June 2007
Plasma Under Pressure In European Public Displays Market

The latest data from Meko's DisplayCast Public Displays market intelligence service indicates a continued steady rise for shipments in Europe.

The total market for LCD and plasma public and information displays will top 220,000 units in 2007 and shows growth of 8% in units in 2008. As expected, plasma screens are becoming less popular despite price declines at the component level and LCD will account for nearly 90% of the market by the start of 2010.

"The growth in this sector has not been as rapid as some had expected", notes Pete Gamby, research director at Meko. "Meko has remained cautious about the prospects for sales of displays that are specifically designed for the public and information display sector and this caution has proved to be well-founded so far". Many of the displays that are supplied to the market covered by Meko's research are sold into relatively large projects and although Europe has a generally buoyant economy, there are a finite number of high-cost installations per year.

Away from the larger projects, Meko believes that some end users could be opting to use LCD or plasma TVs to meet digital signage or other information display needs. "Most LCD TVs are supplied with an analogue PC input and many include an HDMI port", notes Gamby. "This means that for single screen installations using a single video or data source, a TV offers a very price-competitive option". Meko's data does not include sales of consumer TVs into this type of application.

The LCD panel makers have been hoping that digital signage and information display would be a great growth opportunity. The reality is that the market for specialist displays will continue to grow in the low double-digit range overall but LCD sales are showing more than 40% year on year growth in 2007 and continued double-digit increases in 2008 and 2009.

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