How bad were conditions in the notebook PC market during the second quarter? So bad that that even the red-hot segment of display panels for touch-screen mobile PCs suffered a sequential decline during the period, according to a new report entitled “Touch Panel Shipment Database – Notebook PC – Q3 2013,” published by IHS, a leading global source of critical information and insight.
Shipments of touch-screen panels for notebook PC amounted to 4.4 million units in the second quarter of 2013, down 4.9 percent from 4.6 million in the previous quarter, as presented in the attached figure. Up until the second quarter, shipments of these panels had been skyrocketing, rising by 52 percent in the first quarter, by nearly 3,000 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 and by 222 percent in the third quarter of 2012.
Despite the sequential decline, the nascent market for notebook touch screens still is expanding explosively on a year-over-over basis, with shipments surging to 8.9 million units in the first half of 2013, up from a mere 53,000 in the first half of 2012.
“The touch-screen notebook market stalled in the second quarter, reflecting generally terrible conditions in the mobile PC segment,” said Duke Yi, senior manager for display components and materials research at IHS. “Shipment growth also was impacted as PC makers prepared new models for introduction in the second half of 2013. The good news for the market is that sequential growth is forecast to recover in the second half, traditionally the peak season for PC product sales, following launches of new product lineups.”
