The year-on-year decline in public display shipments across Europe, the Middle East and Africa slowed towards the end of last year.
Meko’s DisplayCast tracking service reported that the third quarter of 2009 saw a 6.7 per cent year on year decrease, less than the Q1 and Q2 declines of 14.7 and 15.5 per cent respectively.
Meko saw recovery in developing regions for digital signage, such as the Mediterranean region which saw a 20.4 per cent increase year-on-year and the Middle East and Africa which saw a 14.9 per cent rise.
"We are seeing an improvement in the overall market, but it remains slow to recover", said Andy Barker, analyst director for public displays at Meko. "Not only is it a question of how quickly an economy is coming out of recession but how a country responded to the credit crunch. For instance, Germany saw 5.3 per cent year-on-year volume growth in public display in Q3 as it was faster to recover. Others, such as Spain, saw a quarterly increase of 8.6 per cent, as it looks to invest in digital signage to furnish public project schemes as they near completion, having been started to boost employment at the beginning of the downturn. However, countries only just coming out of recession which made minimal capital investment, such as the UK, are not seeing their public display market improve and saw 22.7 per cent year-on-year decline".
Samsung had a very strong quarter with Meko reporting a share increase of 40.4 per cent of the market, up from 33.6 per cent in Q2 2009. NEC Displays grew quarter-on-quarter and took 21.1 per cent of the EMEA market. "We saw the top three brands strengthen their grip on the market, taking over 73 per cent market share in the quarter, compared with 67.8 per cent in Q2", said Barker.
LCD continued to dominate the technology choice with over 84.8 per cent of the market compared with PDP.
Meko is forecasting double-digit recovery in terms of volume in 2010, although this will vary substantially across the countries and regions. The company said some areas will see an improvement due to external factors such as the World Cup. Others are set to benefit from substantial DOOH projects due to complete during the year. Finally Meko predicts certain markets will continue to see declines due to lack of credit, public investment or both.