Flat Panel TV Growth Plummets in 2011

With all the happenings on the IT market, analysts are looking into what was, what is and what may be on the market as a whole and on every segment in particular, in this case that of Flat Panel TVs.

One can safely say that the past couple of years saw the display industry progressing at a rapid rate.

While the economic recession still has some effects being felt in some parts of the world, it has more or less passed on.

Ironically, however, it was this recession that prompted researchers to develop newer and better displays with low power draw.

Meanwhile, those that actually make the monitors and TVs made sure that the technologies used in the actual image rendering evolves at a rate at least as fast as that of backlighting.

One of the types of TVs that grew much in terms of sales over the course of 2010 was the flat panel.

Now, it is assumed that whatever drove sales upwards during last year will not hold true for 2011, or so DisplaySearch believes.

During 2010, not many users had flat panel TVs, at least as far as regions other than America went, so there were more prospective buyers, leading to a shipment increase of 32%.

It helped that the economy was getting better and consumers suddenly had more money to spend on electronic products. Apparently, 2011 will see that growth rate reduced to 12%.

“As the household installed base for flat panel TVs increases above 50-60%, the growth rate slows, which is currently the situation in Japan, Western Europe, and North America. Emerging markets, however, are still ripe for sustained growth due to a low level of household flat panel TV penetration,” noted Paul Gagnon, Director of North America TV Research for DisplaySearch.

Regarding the display industry as a whole, as before, it is believed that 3D panels will rise in prominence, until they account for 50% of global TV revenues (2014, 100 million shipments globally).