Limitations and Potential
Limitations
Highlights:
Overview
Flat Panel Display technology, while unarguably attractive considering its aesthetic, ergonomic, and environmental characteristics, has yet to become widely adopted. Economic justification and standardization are recognized to be the principal obstacles to short-term growth in sales of flat panel displays. These obstacles are indicative of the industry’s current technology life cycle stage of “early adoption” and as such FPDs still demand a significant premium to the less advanced CRT staple. Further, the practical advantage of some of the touted benefits of FPDs (reduced physical depth and environmental enhancements) are in some cases regionally dependent and/or functions of specific events such as office development and redesign. However, many of the present challenges within the Flat Panel industry will eventually disappear as technological investment materializes into sophisticated products at affordable prices.
Principle Limitations Price
Although the price of flat panels has dropped as much as 50% over the last year, the average FPD price remains prohibitive for most buyers. The price of a flat-panel monitor is considerably lower than its eye-popping introductory level; but, even so, the price is still approximately 3-4x that of a CRT monitor of equivalent size. The downward price pressure has been a function of fierce competition among FPD manufacturers as they struggle to compensate for excess supply and strive to move closer to an equilibrium state. David Mentley, a vice president at Stanford Resources Inc., commented “it is hard to imagine flat-panel display prices dropping much lower. By all our external observations, they're already at material cost." And, further decreases appear problematic due to the corresponding research & development necessary for production innovation. An industry critic notes that “ironically, one of the key obstacles to further price decreases is improved technology. Advances in glass manufacturing will shift production from the less expensive models to the more expensive ones.” That said, the FPD industry faces an arduous task in convincing customers to value the technological benefits to the extent their purchases are justified.
Competing Standards
There are currently two competing FPD interface standards - Plug and Display (supported by VESA) and Digital Flat Panel. Both standards have been designed to enable the flat panel to eventually become a “mass market product” by reducing the number of required components and lowering the price. Flat panels, in contrast to the analog requirements of CRT monitors, use a digital signal to enhance display output. Current video controllers convert a PC's digital video signal to analog for use with CRT monitors. Thus, PFDs, connected to an existing analog video card (this will be the most common scenario as it will take a long time for these cards to filter out of the market) will require the cards analog video signal to be converted back into a digital signal for display."If we can get [digital flat-panel display connections] seamless and backward compatible, it will help a lot," said Compaq's Landrum. "Right now, the image quality is very good with the conversion from digital to analog and back. But it can be much better if we cut out the analog." By cutting the digital-to-analog converters in the video cards and the analog-to-digital converters inside the LCD monitor, "we can take $50 to $100 in cost out of the monitor/video card equation," said Cusick at Philips. "Once the digital link issues are resolved, you'll see a greater acceptance of LCD monitors by high-end users," Cusick said. "Digital offers better color…and overall better image quality [than CRT monitors]."
The lack of a single open standard for FPD interface has created a fair amount of confusion in the buying process forcing companies to gamble on a technology.
Further Price Decreases
This is problematic considering the technology necessity. Ironically, one of the key obstacles to further price decreases is improved technology, said Chan. Advances in glass manufacturing will shift production from the less expensive models to the more expensive ones, he said.
Flat-panel displays struggle to gain wider audience
Computer Reseller News; Manhasset; Aug 31, 1998; Joseph F Kovar;Plasma Displays
Despite declining prices and the many advances in the technology, however, resolution issues and the price of plasma continue to inhibit the technology's widespread adoption among end users, according to industry analysts and resellers. "In terms of plasma, we're not getting cutting-edge display performance for the money right now," said analyst Dave Mentley, a vice president at
Stanford Resources Inc., San Jose, Calif. "There needs to be a compelling reason to choose this product. You have to look for someone who has an absolute space-savings issue, or who wants the cutting-edge visual appeal."
Welcome to the multimedia experience of the future--today
Computer Reseller News; Manhasset; Aug 31, 1998; Michele Pepe;Digital Link Issues (Analog – yileds backward compatibility with existing video cards)
The latest technological innovation to affect flat-panel display costs is the all-digital video connection. Current video controllers convert a PC's digital video signal to analog for use with CRT monitors. For conventional LCD monitors, that signal has to be converted back to a digital signal. Earlier this summer, a few companies, notably Compaq and Princeton Graphic Systems Inc., Santa Ana, Calif., started shipping all-digital flat-panel displays bundled with digital video controllers from third-party vendors such as ATI Technologies Inc., Thornhill, Ontario. "If we can get [digital flat-panel display connections] seamless and backward compatible, it will help a lot," said Compaq's Landrum. "Right now, the image quality is very good with the conversion from digital to analog and back. But it can be much better if we cut out the analog." By cutting the digital-to-analog converters in the video cards and the analogto-digital converters inside the LCD monitor, "we can take $50 to $100 in cost out of the monitor/video card equation," said Cusick at Philips. "Once the digital link issues are resolved, you'll see a greater acceptance of LCD monitors by high-end users," Cusick said. "Digital offers better color…and overall better image quality [than CRT monitors]."
Flat-panel displays struggle to gain wider audience
Computer Reseller News; Manhasset; Aug 31, 1998; Joseph F Kovar;
Potential Macro-Market Growth
Mentley (David Mentley, a vice president at Stanford Resources Inc.) expects the worldwide flat-panel display market to grow to 21.7 million units by 2004 from 729,000 units in 1998. This assumes that six to 10 new factories will begin producing LCD modules (bare LCD panels) in the next six years.
Flat-panel displays struggle to gain wider audience
Computer Reseller News; Manhasset; Aug 31, 1998; Joseph F Kovar;LCD Applications Market Growth Predictions
Portable Computers 7.4 10.41997 2003
Desktop Monitors 397.0 7.5
Handheld Computers 119.0 715.0
Camcorders 379.0 421.0
Digital Still Cameras 131.0 313.0
GPS 145.0 290.0
Financial Screens 136.0 255.0
Steady Growth of Applications
An example is information kiosks. Whereas custom software has been the driving force behind most vertical markets, now new applications are being driven by display technology, as mentioned in a recent article in Computer Reseller News. Pacific Technology, for example, is currently working with a major airline to place plasma displays at loading gates and throughout airport terminals to display imformation and advertising. The future of how airlines are operating at the gate is under a major revolution.
Monitors steal the spotlight
Computer Reseller News; Manhasset; Aug 31, 1998; John Longwell;Digital Cameras
Miniature liquid-crystal displays, fast-food menu boards using rear-projection displays, and portable instruments with field-emission displays are all in the offing. Motorola's Flat Panel Display Division (Tempe, Ariz.) has been sampling 2.9-inch-diagonal field-emission displays (FEDs) for portable instrumentation applications since March, the company revealed at the conference. The display, with 128 x 160-pixel resolution and a 512-color palette, was demonstrated at Moto's booth in a mockup of a handheld instrument, along with 5.1inch FEDs installed in portable equipment and an automobile dashboard. "Our goal was to show what the displays will look like in real applications," said vice president and general manager Peter Shinyeda.
Next-generation units look for real-world apps
Electronic Engineering Times; Manhasset; Jun 29, 1998; David LiebermanGrowth of Touch-Screen Sales
Long a stepchild of the monitor market, touch screens are steadily becoming more commonplace, thanks to improvements in durability, increasing use of flat-- panel LCD and plasma screens and, most significantly, the steady growth of applications such as information kiosks. It is easier to make a flat touch-screen sensor than to make a spherically curved one. Touch screens are becoming more commonly used not only in point-of-purchase kiosks but also on manufacturing floors and in some types of medical facilities where using a keyboard is not convenient.While LCD panel prices are falling, they remain higher than that of equivalent-sized CRT monitors. "So there isn't as big a delta between non-touch and touch once you've made the choice to go to flat panel," Hagermoser said.
Product refinements bolster touch-screen market sales
Computer Reseller News; Manhasset; Aug 31, 1998; Kennet Kiesnoski;Smaller Physical Size (ADV: Office layout – space savings)
It is not a gold rush as yet. The major trading floors aren't simply ripping out CRT monitors and replacing them with flat panels indiscriminately. In order to derive the desired space saving, the actual desk has to be changed, as well, by decreasing its depth. As a result, most flat panel orders have been going into financial institutions that are merging, moving or upgrading a trading floor anyway.
Flat panels...to the rescue?
Wall Street & Technology; New York; Summer 1998; Andy WebbGreat Picture Quality
One hundred years after its invention, the cathode ray tube (CRT) remains the visual standard against which other displays are compared. It's also the dominant technology in the largest display markets: desktop PCs (more than 60 million units per year) and television (more than 100 million units per year). For more than 30 years, the display industry has been experimenting with a number of flat panel display (FPD) technologies to challenge the CRT directly, or to bring new applications to market. Thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT LCDs) are regarded as the best overall cost/performance FPD technology in displays less than 30 inches diagonal. TFT LCDs dominate the highest-volume application for colorgraphic FPDs that has emerged to date: notebook PCs (at approximately 14 million displays in 1997, according to Display Search 1997). While the availability of low-power FPDs enabled the first notebooks, the desire for portable computing actually drove the market. Initially, users bought notebooks despite the quality of the displays - not because of the displays. Today, display quality has improved to the point where it's now a key differentiator - but it still falls short of desktop CRT visual performance.
LCD monitors challenge CRT dominance
Computer Dealer News; Willowdale; May 4, 1998; Stewart HoughMulti-Screen Capability
A more elegant alternative that was not available at the time was PixelVision,s Smartglas flat panel display network. This uses a remotely located hub to support up to four panels using just one mouse and keyboard and a single standard graphics card. The Smartglass display tiles (which use Mitsubishi technology) also have an extremely narrow frame (around 0.5), which allows the trader to easily spread a single large chart or window across two or more panels while minimizing any breaks in the image. At present, the Smartglas system can only be used with PixelVision's own 15-inch display tiles. The hub is the unique selling point for the system, but PixelVision will also be adapting it to run the panels of other manufacturers or a mixture of different brands and display sizes.
Flat panels...to the rescue?
Wall Street & Technology; New York; Summer 1998; Andy WebbVirtual Elimination of Electromagnetic Emission
IBM has scored major flat panel victories on the trading floors of two large financial services firms: Chase Manhattan Bank and CIBC Oppenheimer. Chase-which had previously installed IBM's flat-panel-display (FPD) monitors for traders at its Singapore, Hong Kong and London offices -- rolled out IBM flat panels in support of a group of 64 foreign exchange traders over a period of three weekends in August. CIBC Oppenheimer, meanwhile, plans to replace all of its trading floor cathode ray tube (CRT) terminals with FPDs from IBM by the end of 1999."One of the biggest advantages of flat panels is that it reduces the amount of desk space required," says Robert Elton, vice president of global markets technology at Chase. "And because of the increased density that you get, you actually get about a 20% reduction on a cost per desk basis...over CRTs." To date, Elton adds, Chase has deployed more than 1,000 IBM FPDs for its traders worldwide.
Chase Manhattan and CIBC Oppenheimer select IBM flat panels for trading floors
Wall Street & Technology; New York; Oct 1998; Robert Sales;
Microdisplays
Although still an emerging technology, microdisplays could trigger a fundamental shift in the way products are designed and produced for some of the industry's largest consumer markets. Certainly, any significant displacement of CRTs on a price/performance basis in television or computer monitors would be such a shift. Microdisplays also have the potential to serve other markets.Small, light-weight, low-power, lowcost, fully capable displays have important product implications for products that exploit broadly available information for entertainment, business and communication. Seen in this light, microdisplays have the potential to be revolutionary in the same sense that the mouse and graphical user interfaces have been. By challenging assumptions about how the industry views and interacts with visual information, microdisplays will open up new possibilities for products and services that do not exist yet.
Industry Links
http://www.stanfordresources.com/main/links.html