Diversified the offer by the incorporation of technology, the monitors fight in a very competitive market and with consumers who define new usage profiles.

Por Rodolfo Pollini

According to Pablo Oliveira, Country Product Manager at Asus, in recent years the use of the monitor has diversified, partly due to its evolution in the world of gaming and also due to the pandemic, when they brought portable monitors, a small niche whose demand increased with users who did not want to have a very large monitor in their homes and with the portable ones they had a second device connected by USB. “In gaming, year after year we see changes in the panels”, he added. “The 144 Hz refresh rate is very standardized, but in Argentina we are already working with 165 and globally there are 360 ​​Hz models”. “Last year we did not notice a big difference with the 2020 market, but we saw that, although mobility redefined the entire scope of work, the monitor market continues to be in demand due to users' need for greater productivity or to use two screens,” said Estefanía Vivas, Field Marketing Manager at Dell Technologies.

“The growth in mobility was accompanied by the use of multiple screens and that is where the growth of monitors arose,” agreed Harold Becker, Interior Manager at HDC. “We are in the market for flat screens and notebooks and we have a gaming computer that we can offer along with the gaming monitor.”

From Viewsonic, Marcos Paredes, Territory Manager, recognized that the pandemic affected the monitor market positively." "Teleworking generated a boost, at the same time as distance education," he said. "Before, in homes there was a PC that one of the children used to study, or the parents to consult Facebook, or the newspaper. However, Houses became schools and offices and it is difficult to work all the time with a laptop screen; At some point you need an extended monitor. Another segment that influenced was gaming. Between 2019 and 2020 we multiplied the sale of gaming monitors by 6 and in 2021 this growing trend continued.”

DOES THE PLANE CURVE?

“The trend is that curved gaming-type monitors are going to have a slower response speed than curved and flat commercial-type monitors,” said Max Roth, from Dell. “We also identified that in productivity tasks the user is more efficient with a curved monitor, because they can see more information simultaneously.”

“2021 was a continuity of the trend that was observed throughout 2020,” said Martín Sánchez, Consumer Brand Manager at Lenovo. "As a result of the need for teleworking, monitors showed a substantial jump in terms of sales. After the boom of the strong years of the pandemic, a decrease in the market is seen at a general level in all lines and it is projected that monitors are not going to be the exception. Due to the new work modalities, there will be an improvement in the characteristics sought by users. Specialized monitors began to be valued more, such as those related to the gamer world. That is why we project an increase in the number of units. We consider that factors such as the consolidation of the home office and the new demands of gaming, among others, will only consolidate this trend. Regarding the latest Marketshare result at the regional level
(LAS) we reached a historical maximum with 12.3% participation. We began to be part of the map in the consumer market, winning business in different countries, with accelerated growth in e-commerce and increasingly consolidating our Run-rate business.”

Edgardo Folla, Marketing Director of Philips TV & Sound (TPV), also recognized the impact of mobility and notebooks on monitors, although due to size and ergonomics, for many users it is not the same to have the screen inside the notebook than in parallel. “There are even those who do not use the notebook keyboard,” he added. "With the pandemic there was a rebound in the market and both 2020 and 2021 were good years for monitors due to the distribution of work between the office and home. Hybrid work continues and we expect some active years for this business."

Uses and users
Analyzing the demand, Folla maintained that the consumer's jump from lower to larger inches takes a little more time than in televisions, although he acknowledged that this is happening and occurs more quickly in the gaming segment. “The esports professional needs a large screen so as not to lose any details of the game”, he explained. "There, the floor is standardized at 24", while among the standard monitors the 19" ones still have a relative weight, although the 22" and 24" ones are noticeable with an increasing participation trend."

“For about two years the market standard has been the 24-inch monitor,” Oliveira agreed. "The demand for curved ones is very subjective, there are those who prefer them and those who feel better about a flat one. In volume, in Argentina standard monitors have much more weight than gaming monitors, approximately in a 10 to 1 ratio, because the tax burden is high and is felt much more in the most specified models.