Firming of panel pricing contributes to drop in holiday TV sales in China, NPD says

LCD TV sales volume during China’s National Day holidays earlier this month were below expectations, at 2.5 million, a 5 percent drop year over year, said an NPD DisplaySearch blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/ZCSkY4). The decline follows weakness in other recent high-volume selling periods including the Spring Festival of 2014 and the May Day holiday in 2014, said analyst Bing Zhang. He said TV sales during the traditional holiday periods are becoming less important due to growing competition from online channels that run frequent promotions. Market share of e-commerce was projected at 15 percent mid-year, growing to 30 percent by the end of 2015, due to “aggressive price promotions,” Zhang said. Weakness in TV sales was also due to a firming of panel prices, which limited price erosion for low-end and mainstream models, he said. The price of a 32-inch open cell LCD TV panel rose from $80 in June to $90 in September, due to strong panel demand, which meant fewer “fighter” models during the national holiday, he said. Major TV brands pushed larger size LCD and 4K TVs, and 4K TV sales penetration reached 27 percent during the holiday period despite price tags that were 15-25 percent higher than HDTVs, he said. DisplaySearch research found major Chinese brands have been increasing TV panel purchases as well as TV set production during the past several months for both export and domestic markets. Local brands are carrying five to six weeks of inventory, which Zhang called “normal," even though the sales results were lower than expected. DisplaySearch expects Chinese brands to keep restocking panels to meet demand during upcoming promotional periods and to try to meet 2014 business plan targets in Q4.