A U.S.-based brokerage raised its earnings estimates in 2015 and 2016 for the AU Optronics Corp (AUO)(NYSE: AUO) on Jan. 12, due to greater TV demand and easing pressure on panel prices.

The brokerage remains anonymous due to the new rules by Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission, now that it is offering specific forecasts and numbers.

The brokerage has revised upward its earnings per share projections for AUO, the world’s fourth biggest flat-panel maker, by 44% to US$0.075 this year, and by 32% to US$0.06 next year.

The earnings per share revisions reflected the demand for new TVs and AUO’s capacity expansion plans, along with greater consumption power in the U.S. and the recent depreciation of the Taiwan dollars, the brokerage said.

“For full-year 2015, we expect balanced TFT-LCD industry supply/demand, and the pressure on panel prices should be mitigated,” the brokerage’s research note on Jan. 8 said.

It also said that AUO will benefit from upgrades in product offerings, such as large-sized, ultra-HD 4K, curved, and wide color-range panels, leading to a recovery of its operating margin to 7% in 2015 from 5% in 2014.

Meanwhile, the anonymous brokerage maintained an “overweight” rating on AUO shares and raised the price target for the stock from US$0.56 to US$0.73. An IHS DisplaySearch analyst said that prices for the 32-inch TV panels had risen 6% to 8% during the fourth quarter last year from a quarter earlier, while prices quoted for 40-inch and 50-inch TV panels had also gained 2% to 3% in the fourth quarter last year.

TV panels are the major revenue source for AUO and Innolux Corp (TPE: 3481), which are also the two largest flat panel makers in Taiwan, and they account for more than 40% of the total sales for flat panels.

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According to Gartner’s latest report on the PC market shipments and marketshare, the company is reporting that overall global PC shipments shrunk 0.5% year over year. However, if you look at the US and EMEA figures, you see that the US grew by a sizable 4.2% and Europe more than doubled that by growing a hefty 9.6%.

What this means is that even though the US and Europe, which are considered developed markets, saw significant growth, the losses in Asia and other global markets (Latin America and Africa) ate up all of those growths in shipments. Also, Gartner’s data does not include Chromebooks or non-x86 tablet PCs, which may even skew the US and EU PC market figures downward where we’re seeing a huge resurgence of Chromebooks.

As you can tell from Gartner’s PC Market table for the entire global market, Lenovo continues to see incredibly strong growth year over year mostly at the cost of ‘other’ PC market vendors who saw their shipments decreasee 15.5%. The reality is that the global PC market last quarter was effectively flat when compared to last year since 0.5% is almost within their margin of error. As such, any gains are very likely at the cost of some other competitor.

In the US, HP still continues to be the number one vendor in the PC market even though Dell seems to be catching up to them, showing the largest growth, a whopping 18.4% year over year. Apple also saw fairly good growth, meaning that their overall marketshare of the US PC market continues to grow. Toshiba was actually the only major vendor to see a significant decrease in shipments, which is very likely due to the fact that the company’s overall product line in the US is fairly weak. Globally, Toshiba is not even ranked top 5.

Europe is a fantastic story for the PC market and overall the top four vendors saw fantastic growth with HP seeing 14% growth while Lenovo and Acer both saw over 40% growth year over year. Even ASUS saw over 33% growth in the third quarter compared to last year, which bodes really well for the Asian manufacturers. In fact, the companies’ contraction in Asia is very likely offset by growth in Europe where ASPs are generally higher.

Overall, it appears as though the PC market is nowhere near finished and that tablets are not having the impact that many would have you believe. The developed markets have had their time with tablets and the saturation of tablets has pretty much reached its peak. The PC Market in Asia and other markets is either struggling due to reduced overall economic demand (like in China) or due to tablets still not having reached saturation levels that they have in the developed markets. If you consider that the developed markets are generally more profitable for most PC manufacturers (regardless of where they’re from) then most PC manufacturers will consider the third quarter a good one that could be better.

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According to Jon Peddie’s latest GPU marketshare numbers for Q1 2014, the add-in board market shrunk 0.8% year over year and a more expected 6.7% quarter over quarter. Most people expect GPU seasonality between Q1 and Q4 regardless of what year it is, but the 0.8% decrease year over year is still an indication of basically flat growth/slight shrinkage. Even though, this is significantly less than in laptops and the overall PC business in terms of shrinkage. for the GPU market as a whole, shipments were down 11.6% quarter-to-quarter, and down 4% compared to the same quarter last year. This is clearly a lot worse than what we’re seeing from the discrete add-in board market.

Additionally, much like we saw in laptop and desktop graphics, the add-in board market saw the complete elimination of two minuscule competitors and their market share. According to Jon Peddie Research’s estimates, the GPU market for add-in boards is now between AMD and Nvidia GPU, period. However, Nvidia was able to maintain their 65% market share over AMD’s 35% marketshare, meaning that over the course of the last quarter both companies effectively sold at the same rate as another, contrary to what some might lead you to believe. Total shipments decreased this quarter to 14 million units with both AMD and Nvidia reporting quarter to quarter shipments decreasing 6.6%.

This is still better, however than the 9% reduction seen in the overall PC market, indicating that desktop GPUs with add-in cards and add-in card sales overall are far less impacted by the shrinkage of the PC market than some analysts would lead people to believe.  However, GPUs are usually a pretty good indicator of future growth since many of these cards have to be purchased prior to their integration, which means that most PC vendors will likely see a fairly flat growth for the next quarter, which is basically in line with most predictions of PC shipments.

The post Desktop GPUs Shrunk in Q1, Nvidia Held Marketshare appeared first on VR World.

According to Jon Peddie’s latest GPU marketshare numbers for Q1 2014, the add-in board market shrunk 0.8% year over year and a more expected 6.7% quarter over quarter. Most people expect GPU seasonality between Q1 and Q4 regardless of what year it is, but the 0.8% decrease year over year is still an indication of basically flat growth/slight shrinkage. Even though, this is significantly less than in laptops and the overall PC business in terms of shrinkage. for the GPU market as a whole, shipments were down 11.6% quarter-to-quarter, and down 4% compared to the same quarter last year. This is clearly a lot worse than what we’re seeing from the discrete add-in board market.

Additionally, much like we saw in laptop and desktop graphics, the add-in board market saw the complete elimination of two minuscule competitors and their market share. According to Jon Peddie Research’s estimates, the GPU market for add-in boards is now between AMD and Nvidia GPU, period. However, Nvidia was able to maintain their 65% market share over AMD’s 35% marketshare, meaning that over the course of the last quarter both companies effectively sold at the same rate as another, contrary to what some might lead you to believe. Total shipments decreased this quarter to 14 million units with both AMD and Nvidia reporting quarter to quarter shipments decreasing 6.6%.

This is still better, however than the 9% reduction seen in the overall PC market, indicating that desktop GPUs with add-in cards and add-in card sales overall are far less impacted by the shrinkage of the PC market than some analysts would lead people to believe.  However, GPUs are usually a pretty good indicator of future growth since many of these cards have to be purchased prior to their integration, which means that most PC vendors will likely see a fairly flat growth for the next quarter, which is basically in line with most predictions of PC shipments.

The post Desktop GPUs Shrunk in Q1, Nvidia Held Marketshare appeared first on VR World.