Australia, for example, is eliminating its Solar Credit Multiplier and incentives in Victoria and Queensland. Japan's demand will peak ahead of tariff reductions in April. China, which has already hiked its solar demand expectations and will likely do so again, should see the bulk (75 percent) of its 7-GW demand in 2013 coming in the second half of the year -- but changing feed-in tariff rates should spur PV developers to finish projects earlier in the year to avoid the year-end crush. And India could see anywhere from a 3.7-GW to 9.0-GW increase in demand, with an emphasis on off-grid and rooftop sectors, as it mulls the final version of Phase II of its National Solar Mission.

  China and India are also at the forefront of recent trade war talks over solar energy support, with domestic content requirements in the spotlight. And these nations are also being more selective about which solar PV technologies they use: in Japan it's high-efficiency modules for constrained-space locations, in China it's domestically manufactured multi c-Si modules, and India's surging rooftop market (and proposed rewrite of its domestic content rules) would presumably hamper the market for thin-film suppliers.

  "Having a single go-to-market strategy to meet growing PV demand across the entire APAC region is no longer viable," stated Chris Sunsong, analyst at NPD Solarbuzz. "Leading APAC countries are now evolving into micro-climates that create customized supply channels." The upshot, he says, is that suppliers have to "pick and choose" which countries and application segments they will target.