Taiwan's shipments of small- to medium-size LCD panels are expected to edge down 1.1% sequentially in the third quarter of 2021 after growing 11.7% in the second quarter, according to Digitimes Research.

Taiwan shipped a total of 210 million small to medium-size panels in the second quarter, down 9% on year. The sequential growth in the second quarter was driven mainly by demand from feature phones and entry-level wearables.

With smartphone demand to pick up in the third quarter, Hannstar is expected to shift some of its feature phone panel capacity to make larger-size smartphone panels. This should reduce the number of panel output by Taiwanese makers in the third and result in a 19.6% on-year shipment decline.

In addition, Hannstar shipping all its inventory panels to Huawei in the third quarter of 2020 before US trade sanctions began taking effect also significantly increase the comparison base and create an almost 20% drop on year in Taiwan's third-quarter shipments.

Since Amazon has shifted its attention to strengthen its over-10-inch tablet products and China-based panel maker HKC will join the competition of 7- to 8-inch entry-level tablets against Taiwanese suppliers, Taiwan's small- to medium-size tablet panel shipments may slip over 28.9% sequentially in the third quarter.

As the smartphone LCD panel market continues to be taken over by AMOLED panels, tablets are gradually leaning toward featuring large-size panels and the panel market is suffering from the serious driver IC shortages, Taiwan's small- to medium-size LCD panel shipments are expected to drop 6.9% on year to 790 million units in 2021.

By DIGITIMES