Increasingly iSuppli is stepping on the toes of the leading display researcher DisplaySearch, and this time it has done it by doing something it already does well in other areas of research ‘ adding up the chips that are being sold inside modern TV sets.
iSuppli says that the first quarter was something of a cliff drop for TV chips, and that 2009 may be a down year, but the shape of the curve means that it is an area that will have long term growth, due primarily to LCD screens making up more and more of the total market.
It says that the global market revenue for semiconductors used in all types of TVs will rise to $13.9 billion in 2013, up from $9 billion in 2008, after a fall this year to $7.6 billion down 15.4%.
In the first quarter revenue was down sequentially from the immediate past quarter, for the second quarter in a row, to just $1.55 billion, off 4.1%. It was off a huge 41.3% in the first quarter, so you can see how fast it is recovering.
This all points to a rapid recovery in the demand for what has been one of the key indicators for analog to digital conversion, and for consumer markets generally.
After such an aggressive first-quarter decline, iSuppli says that global TV semiconductor revenue came up by 20% sequentially in the second quarter, and this type of growth will be carried through into the third quarter as inventories are restocked. The fourth quarter will be business as usual.
‘The pinch that consumers around the world are feeling from the global economic downturn has hurt recent demand for TV semiconductors,’ observed Randy Lawson, senior analyst for DTV and display electronics for iSuppli. ‘Sales of higher-end televisions models with the latest features struggled in the first quarter, impacting shipments of higher-priced advanced semiconductors. Meanwhile, smaller-screen, less feature-rich sets are expected to expand their share of total television unit sales. This caused revenue from shipments of television semiconductors to decline.’
The company then concludes that LCD-TVs will account for 91% of global TV semiconductor shipments by revenue by 2012, up from 62% last year. Effectively LCD TVs need more chips (by value) than CRT TVs, and any drift to flat screens is a rise in the underlying chip sales.
Naturally HDTVs are creating yet another leap forward in the semiconductor market as more advanced image processing is needed to render full 1080p HD panels, as will the chips needed to connect these TV sets to the internet. On the horizon is 3-D rendering as well, which some parts of the world are anticipating during the 2013 timescale.