An earthquake that shouldn’t have been bigger in most countries was the last straw for the monitor panel industry in Asia. Taiwan, the market leader in this area, has suffered the greatest consequences and the panelists are already working to mitigate any damage that has occurred, which will lead to higher prices for monitors and lower unit production pending. from 2021.
AU Optronics loses part of its production in the event of a disaster
With the precision that is required today in any design, implementation and construction of an electronic component, a large-magnitude earthquake drops thousands of hours of labor and a lot of money to the ground in seconds. .
AU Optronics is one of the world’s leading LCD panelists and due to this earthquake reported extensive damage to production lines, where it took several hours to simply clean the machines, then start repairs and continue. with the common production rate.
But, even so, the panels being manufactured were damaged and the company had to get rid of them for obvious reasons, losing production. Knowing that AU Optronics manufactures hundreds of thousands of panels, it is more than likely that the damage will be significant.
Another of the sectors that was affected was that of RAM memories, although production would have been stopped in time to avoid damage and neither buildings, machines or production tools were damaged, so after these seconds shutdown, the activity was fortunately able to continue.
NEG has damaged equipment and will need to be repaired
Nippon Electric Glass holds 10% of the global glass substrate manufacturing capacity and supplies an incredible number of panelists. Due to the earthquake and according to the company, the company had to shut down for 5 hours, where they detected production equipment with physical damage. This shutdown means a huge cost to the entire industry, as substrates that cannot be shipped will have to be purchased from competing companies, which will increase the global collapse as they are not prepared for it.
The damage suffered by NEG is of such caliber that the company may not resume normal activities and performance for 3 or 4 months, that is, the availability of substrates will be interrupted in at least a quarter, or even two.
If that wasn’t enough, one must remember the other problem facing the industry: the shortage of certain key components, such as boards or integrated circuits.
Monitors are scarce, no panels or components to assemble
If you are considering buying a monitor, you currently have two options: either save money and earn it until the middle of next year (and if all goes according to plan), or buy now before prices increase further.
Uncertainty is clouding market analysts and they see nothing clear that the situation will improve anytime soon. The situation will worsen and the supply chain will collapse as shortages become more apparent. No company wants to talk about price increases, but what is certain is that in some models it is already noticeable, others follow a rather horizontal line and even some models on the verge of being discontinued see their prices go down.
So it may be the right time to buy a model at “good price”, because the trend is totally defeatist in terms of costs and delivery times.
