Newspapers in Taiwan are claiming that shipments of LCD flat TV screens are down in the US, and that inventory levels are building at stores in the US, causing new shipments of TV sets to falter from mostly Chinese factories.
This will have the affect of crashing TV prices in US stores, and given that Europe ships even more LCD TVs than the US, prices may well drop there too. If there is too much disparity in US-European pricing, it leads to grey importers who level out prices.
The stories are being carried by the popular Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes, known for its knowledgeable coverage of all things digital in the region, but not always spot on with some of its breaking stories. It has a good take on what’s happening in Taiwan, but that’s not always the full picture.
DigiTimes claims that LCD TV inventory levels in the US market are currently 2 to 3 weeks longer than usual, which has made retail operations slash further orders and in turn vendors have cut orders and system makers have been lowering shipment expectations in the coming quarter. They in turn have stopped stocking components quite so aggressively and the entire flat TV eco-system is on the verge of stalling, or at least that’s what we are led to believe. The fall in shipments could be as high as 10% to 20% the newspaper says.
This should be true for all of the top tier time vendors including Philips, Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung but it certainly has not shown in the past quarter’s figures for Samsung and Sony ‘ so perhaps it is illusory. The US also has its own local manufacturer in Vizio and it too is said to have had oversupply from its Taiwanese partner, who threatened to halt production for two weeks over the Summer to save money. None of the suppliers have confirmed the accuracy of the reports to any Western publication and we are inclined to think that the TV market is extremely seasonal and that much the same happens more or less every year ‘ perhaps this year it is a little more extreme than usual.