2004 lcd screen pricelist

That might soon change as a glut of liquid crystal display flat-panel televisions, called LCDs, enter the market, a result of a boom in new factories. According to several manufacturers and analysts, the prices for LCD flat-panel TVs will drop in the new year, falling by as much as 30 percent by the end of 2005. The prices of plasma flat-panel TVs are also expected to fall significantly.

Flat-panel TVs represent less than 10 percent of the 29-million TV sets to be sold to dealers in 2004. Of the flat-panel sales, 73 percent are LCD sets and 27 percent are the larger plasma models.

Manufacturers, like the makers of other consumer electronics, are investing heavily to expand their production capacity, hoping to capture market share. Earnings, they reason, will come later, although until recently, these sets had proved highly profitable. In the first three quarters of 2004, the LG.Philips LCD Co. made $1.4-billion in profits from LCD televisions, although the company reported a drop in earnings in the third quarter from the year-earlier period. Another manufacturer, AU Optronics, made $900-million in the three quarters, according to DisplaySearch, a technology research company.

This windfall has given them the cash to build next-generation plants capable of creating larger screens at lower per-unit costs. Each new generation LCD plant costs $1-billion to $3-billion.

Next year, AU Optronics and another LCD maker, CPT, both based in Taiwan, will complete new plants for making 32- and 37-inch displays. To cut construction costs, Sony and Samsung are in a $2-billion joint venture to build the world"s first LCD plant designed to produce eight 40-inch or six 46-inch displays cut from one large piece of glass.

Bharath Rajagopalan, general manager for TCL-Thomson Electronics, owner of the RCA brand, said: "LCD production is becoming a commodity game. There is an inordinate amount of competition and price erosion."

Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch, predicts there will be a 53 percent increase in capacity during 2005, and he says that will put a lot of pressure on pricing. A 42-inch LCD set that costs close to $4,500 today will be $3,100 next year and $2,250 in 2006, he says.

Tasso Koken, vice president and general merchandise manager for Sears home electronics, predicts that in 18 months, a 20-inch LCD TV from a well-known manufacturer will be less than $299, down from $700 to $800 today. "The 2005 price drops in LCD will make the 2004 reductions look like a walk in the park," he said.

Average consumers do not seem to care which technology they are buying. "Generally speaking, the consumer has no understanding of the differences between LCD and plasma technology," Koken of Sears said.

Many industry executives expect that later this decade, LCD units, which are typically 3 to 5 inches deep, will completely replace smaller-size picture-tube sets. Next year, Sony expects to double the number of flat-panel TVs it sells in the United States, while decreasing its picture-tube offerings by 20 percent, said Mike Fidler, a Sony senior vice president. The picture-tube business is expected to remain profitable for the company for the next three years, but then decline as the price of LCD TVs falls below $500, Fidler said.

Falling prices for larger screen sizes might force plasma sets to be sold only in sizes around 60 inches, where they maintain their price edge over LCD screens. Plasma panels contain only electrodes and phosphors, so they can be made in larger sizes without a proportionate increase in price, according to Ed Wolff, a vice president at Panasonic.

But some are not so sanguine about the future of plasma. Fidler of Sony says that LCD TVs will drop so much in price that plasma will go away in three to five years.

Given the uncertainty of whether customers will take to mounting their TVs on a wall, some companies like RCA are hoping that a less-expensive large-screen projection TV will remain a viable alternative to LCD or plasma sets. A harbinger of that trend, the company"s recently introduced Projects, a 61-inch projection set, is just 7 inches deep.

Prices for large-sized LCD panels for notebooks and LCD monitors have begun declining this month, bringing an end to a five-quarter period of consecutive increases.

Panel prices began to increase in April 2003, and rose about 21-28% from that time until last month. The price of 15-inch notebook and LCD monitor panels in the XGA format increased to the US$230 to US$235 range in June, up from US$180 to US$190 last April.

In June, panel buyers’ biggest concerns were component shortages and cost increases, as well as hikes in panel prices. Concern over future supply constraints, combined with worries over further price increases, prompted notebook and LCD monitor makers to keep boosting their orders for panels in the second quarter, even though they had detected signs of a slowdown in demand.

A similar situation is also occurring in the 14-inch notebook panel market, where prices declined on month by US$9 in July. iSuppli/Stanford Resources expects price reductions to continue in August, with declines ranging from US$8 to US$20 for notebook and LCD monitor panels and from US$20 to more than US$50 for TV panels. Average price reductions in the third quarter are expected to be 5-10% for notebook and monitor panels and 10-15% for TV panels.

Large-sized LCD panel supply increased 9% on quarter in the second quarter. Supply is expected to increase 14% by the third quarter because most panel suppliers are expanding their capacity, following establishment of new fifth-generation (5G) and 6G fabs.

The LCD TV market was slow in the first half due to high panel and system prices and the sluggish adoption of LCD TVs by consumers, compared to PDP (plasma display panel) or rear-projection microdisplay televisions (RPTVs) using LCD technology or Texas Instruments’ (TI) digital light processing (DLP).

Prices for 30-inch LCD TVs in the first half were in the same range as 42-inch PDP and 50-inch RPTV sets. Because end-user demand for 30-inch LCD TVs was lower than expected, manufacturers scaled back their expectations for the product and instead increased their focus on smaller-sized panels. Panels in the 20-inch and 26/27-inch range appeared to have better prospects in the market.

In LCD monitors, panel demand was notably strong in the first quarter. Although end-user monitor demand declined in the second quarter, panel demand remained very high. However, in the third quarter, demand started to experience a slowdown due to the inventory buildup.

About 53% of large-size LCD panel unit demand and 56% of the area demand still come from monitor applications. Thus, any change in the level of monitor demand has a major impact on the large-size LCD market.

Increasing demand, combined with production adjustments, may bring supply and demand into balance – thus stabilizing prices – by the end of the fourth quarter. iSuppli/Stanford Resources continues to predict higher revenue growth for the LCD market in 2004.

The Samsung Electronics Company, the world"s largest maker of liquid crystal displays, said yesterday that L.C.D. prices need to fall 20 percent in the third quarter for demand to pick up in the final three months of the year. ""Prices, particularly for L.C.D. televisions, are too high for the average person,"" said Lee Sang Wan, president for the flat-screen display business of the company, based in Suwon, South Korea. ""The second-half outlook for the market looks soft."" Demand will probably pick up in the fourth quarter, led by monitors, said Mr. Lee, who spoke to reporters at the International Meeting on Information Display in Daegu, south of Seoul. His comments underscored concern that producers might have overestimated consumers" willingness to replace glass tube screen televisions with slimmer L.C.D. versions at a premium. On Monday, the market researcher DisplaySearch cut its global L.C.D. sales outlook for 2004 by 13 percent, to $36 billion, citing rising inventories that are cutting the prices of flat televisions and computer monitors. The industry had 2003 sales of $24 billion. Shares of the world"s five largest L.C.D. makers have fallen 13 percent to 31 percent in the last three months, amid concern that growth in demand will not live up to expectations. DisplaySearch said a 17-inch monitor that sold for $459 to consumers in the second quarter could fall as low as $299 to $349 by this holiday season in the United States.

"Screen sizes keep getting bigger and that has proven to drive interest and demand," said Steven Baker, VP of industry analysis at NPD group. "The No. 1 reason people buy a new TV is for the screen size and I don"t expect that to change."

I asked Baker for some stats on how TVs have changed along two basic metrics: price and screen size. His earliest numbers were from 2004. That"s two years after I started at CNET and a time when most TVs were still CRTs and rear-projection models -- just 7% of TVs sold that year were flat-panel. Today every TV sold is a flat-panel TV.TV size and price averages over 15 years

Even though I"ve been reviewing TVs for that entire 15-year stretch, it"s still amazing to me how stark those numbers are. The most impressive is the last one: Calculating from that average size and price, a square inch of screen in 2004 cost more than five times as much (!) as it does today -- more than seven times as much if you factor in inflation. Baker says the average price of TVs peaked in 2007 between $900 and $1,000.

Before flat TVs came along, the most important factor limiting the mass adoption of big screens wasn"t desire -- we"ve always hungered for a huge, immersive, theatrical picture in our living rooms. It was technology. CRT-based TVs maxed out at 40 inches so if you wanted a bigger screen your only choice was a technology that

And that RPTV was a good deal, at least compared to flat-panel TVs at the time. In 2005 CNET reviewed one of the first LCD-based TVs, theSelect TVs during the fat-to-flat transition

The transition from rear-projection to flat-panel was basically complete just three years later with CNET"s last RPTV review, the 65-inch Mitsubishi WD-65737. In 2009 it sold for $1,600 and although it had an "excellent screen-size-to-price ratio"

Those two brands exemplify how betting on the wrong TV technology horse can go awry. Panasonic invested heavily in plasma but after that technology failed it ended up leaving the US entirely in 2016 -- and hasn"t sold a new TV here since. Samsung invested primarily in LCD and, more recently, in its SUHD and QLED-branded LCD variants, and has enjoyed the No. 1 worldwide market share in TVs for more than a decade.2019 top 5 market share (units sold)

I agree with Baker: People will always want bigger, cheaper TVs. The next frontier is almost incomprehensibly huge -- 85 inches -- but today you can buy one for $1,900. It won"t be long before it costs $999 or even less. That might be close to the upper limit for traditional flat-panel LCD and OLED tech when you consider shipping and factors like, you know, fitting the thing through a doorway, but modular MicroLED and good old-fashioned projectors.

Liquid-crystal-display televisions (LCD TVs) are television sets that use liquid-crystal displays to produce images. They are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television display type. LCD TVs are thin and light, but have some disadvantages compared to other display types such as high power consumption, poorer contrast ratio, and inferior color gamut.

LCD TVs rose in popularity in the early years of the 21st century, surpassing sales of cathode ray tube televisions worldwide in 2007.plasma display panels and rear-projection television.

Passive matrix LCDs first became common as portable computer displays in the 1980s, competing for market share with plasma displays. The LCDs had very slow refresh rates that blurred the screen even with scrolling text, but their light weight and low cost were major benefits. Screens using reflective LCDs required no internal light source, making them particularly well suited to laptop computers. Refresh rates of early devices were too slow to be useful for television.

Portable televisions were a target application for LCDs. LCDs consumed far less battery power than even the miniature tubes used in portable televisions of the era. In 1980, Hattori Seiko"s R&D group began development on color LCD pocket televisions. In 1982, Seiko Epson released the first LCD television, the Epson TV Watch, a small wrist-worn active-matrix LCD television. Sharp Corporation introduced the dot matrix TN-LCD in 1983, and Casio introduced its TV-10 portable TV.Citizen Watch introduced the Citizen Pocket TV, a 2.7-inch color LCD TV, with the first commercial TFT LCD display.

Throughout this period, screen sizes over 30" were rare as these formats would start to appear blocky at normal seating distances when viewed on larger screens. LCD projection systems were generally limited to situations where the image had to be viewed by a larger audience. At the same time, plasma displays could easily offer the performance needed to make a high quality display, but suffered from low brightness and very high power consumption. Still, some experimentation with LCD televisions took place during this period. In 1988, Sharp introduced a 14-inch active-matrix full-color full-motion TFT-LCD. These were offered primarily as high-end items, and were not aimed at the general market. This led to Japan launching an LCD industry, which developed larger-size LCDs, including TFT computer monitors and LCD televisions. Epson developed the 3LCD projection technology in the 1980s, and licensed it for use in projectors in 1988. Epson"s VPJ-700, released in January 1989, was the world"s first compact, full-color LCD projector.

In 2006, LCD prices started to fall rapidly and their screen sizes increased, although plasma televisions maintained a slight edge in picture quality and a price advantage for sets at the critical 42" size and larger. By late 2006, several vendors were offering 42" LCDs, albeit at a premium price, encroaching upon plasma"s only stronghold. More decisively, LCDs offered higher resolutions and true 1080p support, while plasmas were stuck at 720p, which made up for the price difference.

Predictions that prices for LCDs would rapidly drop through 2007 led to a "wait and see" attitude in the market, and sales of all large-screen televisions stagnated while customers watched to see if this would happen.Christmas sales season.

When the sales figures for the 2007 Christmas season were finally tallied, analysts were surprised to find that not only had LCD outsold plasma, but CRTs as well, during the same period.Pioneer Electronics was ending production of the plasma screens was widely considered the tipping point in that technology"s history as well.

In spite of LCD"s dominance of the television field, other technologies continued to be developed to address its shortcomings. Whereas LCDs produce an image by selectively blocking a backlight, organic LED, microLED, field-emission display and surface-conduction electron-emitter display technologies all produce an illuminated image directly. In comparison to LCDs all of these technologies offer better viewing angles, much higher brightness and contrast ratio (as much as 5,000,000:1), and better color saturation and accuracy. They also use less power, and in theory they are less complex and less expensive to build.

Manufacturing these screens proved to be more difficult than originally thought, however. Sony abandoned their field-emission display project in March 2009,

Though they rose in early 2004, LCD monitor prices decreased steadily throughout most of the year, a key factor in helping solution providers increase the attach rate of LCD monitors to their custom systems.

Larry Stoddard, owner of Stoddard Enterprises, a small Pine Island, Minn.-based custom-system builder, said he sells two or three LCD monitors for every CRT monitor.

LCD monitor pricing has recently been plummeting as quickly as memory pricing, said Andy Kretzer, director of sales and marketing at Bold Data Technology, a Fremont, Calif.-based custom-system builder.

Kretzer says 17-inch LCD monitors now sell for as low as $230 to $240. He is also hearing talk that prices could quickly drop to sub-$200. "End users are buying more," Kretzer said. "We rarely sell CRTs anymore."

However, falling prices have not helped Bold Data"s overall monitor sales, as the company recently shut down its LCD monitor assembly operation in the face of intense competition. "It"s more of a gamble to bring parts in to make our own when [prices] are plummeting this fast," he said.

Prices should continue to fall in 2005, due mainly to a 21 percent fall in the price of the LCD modules in the third quarter of 2004 and an expected fall of 19 percent in the fourth quarter, according to a report by research firm DisplaySearch.

Prices for 17-inch LCDs are falling the fastest. Those prices fell 23 percent quarter to quarter in the third quarter and should fall even faster by the end of the fourth quarter, according to DisplaySearch.

With dropping prices, customers are also opting for larger displays. Sales of 17-inch LCDs accounted for 52 percent of the market during the third quarter of 2004 and were expected to hit 55 percent by the end of 2004. Going into 2005, DisplaySearch predicts sales shifting toward 19-inch models.