LED backlight penetration rate in monitors to reach 35 percent by 2012

This article appeared on LEDInside. Reproduced here for readers.

Author: Judy Huang, LEDInside

TAIWAN: Recently, LED-backlit LCD monitors are more frequently showing up in the market, indicating the increasing application of LED backlight in monitor field — the slowest growing section among the three major LED backlight application fields. According to LEDinside, the specialized market research house, LED backlight penetration rate in monitors will be no more than 1 percent in 2H09, while is expected to rise to 35 percent by 2012.

Vendors are promoting LED monitors; Are consumers ready to buy?
LED backlight technology has been introduced to monitor field for a long time. However, early products which were flawed in color rendering and uniformity and sold at high prices were not very popular in customers. However, LED technology has been keeping advancing, which brings the advantages of LED backlit monitors more noticeable, thus more and more manufacturers are developing LED backlit monitors and launching new products.

After Dell and AOC, many leading monitor suppliers including Samsung, LG, BenQ and Philips all launched new LCD monitors with LED backlight. And other vendors are also following suit. According to LEDinside, ASUS is to introduce its 20” plus LED LCD monitor by the year end, and CHIMEI plans to release such products in the first quarter of 2010.

Though having begun shipping LED backlit products, due to the high price, few monitor makers are shifting their major capacities to this new technology. For example, a 22’ high-end CCFL monitor currently available on the market is priced at around US$275; a LED-backlit product, however, is sold for around US$ 335, 20 percent higher comparing with top CCFL backlit one. Are consumers willing to pay for the 20 percent price gap? Thus, LEDinside projects the LED backlight penetration rate in monitors will not substantially grow in the short term.

Panel makers are aggressively introducing LED backlight; LED cost is expected to drop
In the same time, panel makers are actively developing LED backlit products. Industry insiders generally hold that 2009 should be the commencement year of LED backlight application in LCD monitors, and the leap will be seen in 2010.

Panel supplier AUO is to use LED backlight for 10 percent to 15 percent of its monitor panels, and INNOLUX president Duan Xingjian said the company targeted 50 percent monitor panels with LED backlight. In the same time, HannStar CEO Zhou Dinghui said the company plans to use LED backlight in all its monitor panels by 2010.

LCD panel cost accounts for a large part of the overall cost of a monitor. The backlight module of LCD monitor needs dozens of LEDs, which cost approximately 30~60 dollars, comparing with no more than 20 dollars for CCFL backlight. The cost gap of dozens of dollars is crucial for monitor.

However, mass production of LED panels could boost production capacity of LEDs, sequently cutting cost. Meanwhile, some companies are actively developing LED backlight modules with lower cost; there are even forecasts that LED backlight module price would drop to the level of general CCFL ones in just three years. According to LEDinside, cost of LED backlight module will necessarily drop under mass production, while when will it equal the cost of CCFL still remains uncertain.

LED backlight penetration rate is expected to reach 35 percent in 2012
The growing application of LED backlight in monitors is the result of notebook and TV vendors aggressively launching LED backlit products. According to LEDinside, LED backlight currently are mostly used in 19”- or larger-sized monitors, which means the backlight modules used in these monitors can also be applied to small-sized LCD TVs.

Due to the current short supply of LED and the price issue, LED backlight may not be popularized in monitors in the short term, while it can be expected that by the later half of 2010, when LED price drops after upstream LED chipmakers ramping up capacities, general acceptance of LED monitors is expected to be boosted.

As long as LED cost drops, monitor makers are likely to speed up introducing LED backlight, as in the case of LED NBs. Therefore, LEDinside estimates that LED monitors could account for 35 percent of the whole monitor market by 2012.