PV market leader, Yingli Green could lose its number one industry ranking in 2014, after revising downward full-year shipment guidance.

Having secured the leadership position in 2012 from Suntech Power Holdings, Yingli Green had a dominant position based on annual PV module shipments.

However, Trina Solar its nearest rival has been closing the gap over the last two years and reiterated full-year module shipment guidance yesterday of 3.6GW to 3.8GW during the release of second quarter 2014 financial results.

Yingli Green had previously guided annual shipments of 4GW to 4.2GW for 2014. However, in releasing second quarter results a day after Trina Solar, the company revised shipment guidance to the same range as its nearest rival.

Trina Solar also guided third and fourth quarter shipments to be over 1GW per quarter and is running at full-capacity.

Yingli Solar estimated third quarter shipments would be in the range of 900MW to 1GW, while reporting second quarter shipments of 887.9MW.

In contrast and despite the company actually reporting shipments slightly below guidance, Trina Solar shipments for the same quarter topped 943.3MW, beating Yingli Green by some margin.

Both companies have PV project pipelines for 2014 that are similar and therefore make the fight for market leadership even more interesting. Trina Solar guided in-house downstream shipments to be in the range of 400MW to 500MW, while Yingli Green has guided 400MW to 600MW.

With both companies developing their downstream PV project businesses and focused on key markets of China, US and Europe as well as Japan the fight for market leadership has not been as close in over a decade.