THE FRONT LINE: MARCH 17, 2005
U.S. DISPLAY CONSORTIUM’S INVESTOR CONFERENCE
The USDC/Needham Display Industry Investor’s Conference had the usual financial reports and a few exciting glimpses into future display technology.
This conference, which is held every year in New York City, brings together venture capitalists, analysts, and company executives. Half-hour presentations in everything from LCOS to OLED technologies are the order of the day, combining financial statements and ‘safe harbor’ disclosures with predictions about production numbers and market share.
Unless you follow the display industry closely, you won’t recognize many of these companies. But you are more than likely to see some of their products or intellectual property (IP) in the coming months and years.
There were several worthwhile presentations during the one-day event. Analyst Bob O’Donnell of IDC gave the morning kickoff talk, revealing the results of an interesting Internet poll taken of 1200 likely TV purchasers. The period in which these folks were planning to buy a new TV was from late November up to the 2005 Super Bowl.
64% were male, and 46% female, with an average income of $110,000, and average age of 47. Not surprisingly, the demand for flat screen TVs was strong, but tempered by price. A majority of respondents also wanted a ‘digital TV’, and about 20% were aware that rear-projection microdisplay TV had a significant edge in price over LCD and plasma.
Perhaps the most interesting result of this survey was that consumers – even those as well heeled as the respondents – are largely agnostic about flat-panel TV technology. When asked for their preference, 36% said LCD, 36% said plasma, and the remainder replied “Don’t Know”.
Figure 1. Doesn’t matter if
it’s a LCD TV (above) or plasma TV (below),
customers are more focused on the price than anything else.
The average screen size under consideration was almost exactly 42 inches, and the consensus was that respondents didn’t want to pay more than $2,000 for that 42-inch TV – whatever technology it used. (The 2004 holiday season sales results showed that 42-inch EDTV plasma, which can be had for close to $2K, were big sellers.)
In a “bad news for the big boys” development, the IDC survey also found that brand names were tied with aspect ratio as the least important considerations in the purchase of a new TV. That explains why no-name brands like Syntax and Ovideon can come out of nowhere to achieve a top five sales performance in Q4 2004, and may also explain why wholesale clubs are the #2 most popular outlets for new TV sales.
Chris Chinnock of Insight Media had an excellent presentation on the microdisplay (LCD, LCOS, DLP) market later in the morning. He pointed out that as new digital TV sales pick up, the screen sizes and average sale price (ASP) is actually increasing. Plasma was indicated as an upscale technology that draws people into store, but many customers purchase a microdisplay TV instead because of price objections for plasma.
Chinnock also pointed out that many would-be purchasers of big screen TVs leave the store more confused than when they started. Some give up altogether, and others do more homework before returning a second time. Better training of store personnel seems to be the key; a recent story on CNET talks about the high rate of returns on HDTV sets because (1) HD content isn’t available or is limited, and (2) analog signals look simply awful on these TVs.
Figure 2. Many rear-projection microdisplay
TVs are returned because
customers aren’t happy with the analog picture quality.
The availability of super-slim RPTVs such as RCA’s Scenium profiles line has dubious appeal to these would-be purchasers, who might be willing to pay 10% to 15% over the cost of a conventional microdisplay TV, not the 100% premium seen now. Other concerns include lamp life (actual life is still unknown, no large surveys have been done in this area), cost of the replacement lamp, warranties, and confusion over the competing technologies.
Jim Sanduski, VP of Marketing for Samsung, delivered the lunch keynote and talked about the “Changing HDTV Landscape” in the USA. Samsung, of course, is a major player in plasma, LCD, and DLP microdisplay, not to mention CRT direct-view TVs and terrestrial and satellite DTV set-top receivers.
Sanduski claimed that the transition to digital TV was bigger than the transition to color from black and white, and that the U.S. analog TV market in 2004 was 18% of worldwide sales with 24 million units. 7.2 million additional digital TV sets were sold, which is about 24% of all U.S. TV sales.
Breaking down the DTV segment showed that 23% were plasma TVs, 15% were LCD TVs, 30% were microdisplay TVs, 7% were CRT direct view models, and 25% were CRT rear projection sets. Of particular interest was that more than half of all TVs sold in 2004 have screen sizes between 20 inches and 32 inches, with the majority selling for less than $400 (67%) and only 18% of models sold for $1,000 or more.
In the LCOS world, Spatialight and Brillian both made rosy forecasts for this microdisplay technology, saying (yields aside) it was cheaper to produce and more easily scaled to higher resolutions than DLP. Spatialight recently started operation of an LCOS facility in Korea, which can make 28,000 sets of 1920x1080 .73” LCOS panels (there are three in a set) per month, eventually reaching 100,000 sets a month.
Figure 3. Spatialight’s 1920x1080 LCOS panel.
One thing that makes Spatialight’s job much, much easier: They were able to purchase LCOS fabrication equipment on the cheap from Philips, who decided to give up on LCOS manufacturing last summer. Spatialight has also locked up a two-year deal with LG as their exclusive supplier of LCOS panels for RPTVs.
Of the remaining presentations, Cambridge Display Technologies (CDT) announced much progress on the organic light emitting diode (OLED) front. CDT’s process uses large polymers to literally ‘print’ the red, green, and blue picture elements, using a sophisticated ink jet printing process, and is scalable to very large screen sizes.
Figure 4. Epson showed this 40-inch stitched OLED TV in July of 2004.
Epson, a CDT partner and licensee, has already shown a 40-inch P-OLED TV using four smaller panels stitched together. CDT mentioned that their process can use either fluorescent or phosphorescent materials, and that a blue LED material has been developed with 10,000 hours of life. Look for OLEDs to make their initial foothold in handheld electronics, migrating to small TV screens later on.