14 DAY TRIAL // LCD monitors vendors usually stick to a sort of schedule when placing orders, but it looks like the latest string of this has seen a delay, according to market rumors.
Recent events turned out to have had consequences more far-reaching than some had expected.
The fact that the world economy has yet to truly recover, especially in Europe, is one of the reasons for how vendors of many sorts of products started to worry.
Another reason is how HP announced it would be backing out of the PC market and spinning off that part of its business.
Granted, HP did say that it had changed its CEO (again), but while this did lead to rumors about the above decision being revoked, no assurance exists yet.
All in all, monitor makers ended up seeing quite a strong set of reasons to worry about potential supply issues in 2012.
With the gloomy mood, they are no doubt worried about possible oversupply more than they would have been otherwise.
As such, according to Digitimes, they have delayed answering the RFQs (requests for quotations) for 2012, placed by their OEM partners.
LCD monitors may be the sort of product that can be found in mostly any common household, but rising demand for notebooks, and decline of desktop sales, has shifted consumer focus away from them.
Exchange rates have also played their part in forcing vendors to be cautious, as did the shortage of labor in China.
The way TFT-LCD prices reached record low prices not long ago didn't exactly provide any reason to see things in a more favorable light either.
All things considered, the liquid crystal monitor segment could do with some sort of breakthrough, like, for example, the Pixel Qi displays gaining ground, now that 3M invested in them.
This is only (very) wild speculation, however, and those panels are, primarily aimed at notebooks and outdoor use, so they might leave the monitors worse off instead of helping.