According to the San Jose based market research firm Stanford Resources, less than 1% of the PC displays shipped in the US in 1998 will be LCDs.   LCD monitors  are expected to account for 5% of total monitor sales by 2000 and 13% by 2002.  LCD prices  will likely be cut in half by 2001 from the current average price of about $1430 .  However the average CRT monitor price in 2001 is estimated to be a paltry $213.  Therefore technology and manufacturing breakthroughs will be needed to have flat panel displays supplant CRTs in the marketplace.  Stanford Resources believes that the price ratio between CRT and flat screens needs to drop to 1:1.5 before most people would consider a flat screen.

Companies large and small are investing heavily in flat panel displays to try to get a piece of the $25.5 billion market predicted for 2003.Some of the major players and their latest product developments include:

• Motorola.  Motorola recently built a $100 million facility in Arizona to produce LED technology displays.

• Cambridge Display Technology (England).  CDT has patented a light emitting polymer (LEP) display, which was the world’s first plastic screen.  This is significant because of the enormous cost in manufacturing the glass LCD screens that could be avoided.

• Phillips Electronics NV.  Phillips has set up a business unit exclusively to develop LEP products based on the flexible semiconductor-based polymer display.

• ELO Touchsystems.  Touch screens are increasing the demand for flat panel displays.  Because a flat panel display can be mounted anywhere, ELO Touchsystems of the US predicts that 20% of all LCDs will have a touch user interface.

• Lucent Technology.  Lucent presented a paper in March 1998 on its  idea of plastic transistors that could be sprayed onto plastic substrates.  The former Bell labs unit said that the spray-on process would be relatively inexpensive and could produce flexible displays

• MIT’s media lab is also working on an electronic paper project that could display pages on a paper-like substance.  Truly an easy to read electronic newspaper which would be automatically updated with the next days news is not far away.