MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA -- LCD monitor sales worldwide will surpass shipments of CRTs in early 2004, according to forecasts by the flat-display research firm ISuppli/Stanford Resources.
However, the LCD lead will be very slim, and could vanish if prices continue to rise as they have in recent months, says Rhoda Alexander, analyst with ISuppli/Stanford Resources. The price hikes are thanks to a shortage of panels, especially for popular 15-inch displays. Vendors are making fewer 15-inch monitor panels because they can get more money by producing larger panels for LCD TVs, or panels for the notebook market.
"Prices have been going up, so that's the wild card in the whole scenario," Alexander said, after announcing her projections this week during the 20th annual Flat Information Displays conference here, sponsored by ISuppli/Stanford Resources.
Change in Trend
Monitor shipments tend to drop in the first quarter of the calendar year, but Alexander forecasts LCD sales either remaining at year-end levels or even rising, while CRT sales decline.
Even though prices may be somewhat higher than they were at mid-year, Alexander expects that many monitor buyers will go with LCDs thanks to "the mind shift people have made, where they had already decided to buy LCDs."
This trend is particularly dramatic in Europe and in North America, where LCD unit sales surpassed CRT sales in the third quarter of 2003 Alexander said. CRTs remain dominant in more price-sensitive markets, such as Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East.
For some U.S. companies, the turnaround in LCD versus CRT sales has been striking. Robert J. Thompson, display product market manager for Dell, says 60 percent of the monitors his company shipped this year were LCDs and 40 percent were CRTs. Thompson says Dell hopes to increase the LCD to CRT ratio to 80:20 in 2004.
He called on the LCD industry to make this happen by helping to decrease the cost differential between larger LCDs and CRTs with comparable viewable areas to $100. Dell was able to achieve its 60:40 LCD to CRT ratio because customers had to pay only $100 more for a PC bundle with a 15-inch LCD than for the same bundle with a 17-inch CRT; but price differentials remain much larger for bigger displays, Thompson said.
Feature Wish List
LCD manufacturers also need to improve product quality. Dell found that a significant number of warranty returns of LCDs were due to pixel defects.
Thompson also called on the industry to try to eliminate chronic over- and undersupply cycles that affect availability and cause costs to constantly fluctuate. Customers who hear that they'll have to wait two weeks for the next LCD shipment often decide to stick with a CRT, Thompson said.
LCDs must also achieve performance parity with CRTs, improving in some key areas. Industry participants noted that flat panels must achieve faster response times to win over gamers, and expand their color range to woo graphics pros. It will take wider viewing angles to draw use in environments where several people have to see the screen. Also, the screens need to be brighter.
Thompson also called on the industry to educate customers and the media on the benefits of LCD technology. For example, some people don't realize that LCDs generally offer larger viewable areas than comparably sized CRTs, and that they consume less energy.
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