Viewpoints

About This Technology

For many years, information-system designers have sought a thin, flat, low-power device to display video and computer-generated images. Researchers have invented many flat-panel-display technologies, but only a handful—LCDs, plasma displays, organic light-emitting–diode displays, paperlike (or e-paper) displays, and field-emission displays—have achieved commercial viability. Flat-panel technology is a fundamental part of mainstream telecommunication, computing, and home-entertainment products.

Opportunities to use flat-panel display technology are widespread. In computer-equipment applications, FPDs—particularly LCDs—provide portability, space savings, and lower power consumption. Application of this technology to commercial and residential video is opening new avenues for training, entertainment, and communications. The technology lets instrument manufacturers incorporate more information-display capabilities into their products, making the equipment both more flexible and more user friendly. Vehicle designers can use FPDs to provide new forms of electronic information and entertainment for operators and passengers. Makers of consumer and office equipment can improve the interactivity of their products and gain the marketing benefits of a high-tech product-design style. FPDs open new opportunities for creative product design and enhanced functionality. Thus far, the desktop- and notebook-computer monitors segment has been the leading revenue generator for the overall FPD market. The displays-for-mobile-handsets-and-other-handhelds (such as MP3 music players) segment has also been a strong performer and second in revenue generating behind computer monitors. From the present to the foreseeable near future, however, the large-area TVs segment is and will be the main market driver, in terms of both technology and revenue. Several factors lead to TV's rise to prominence as the focus of overall FPD market. These factors are FPD's relatively low market penetration and high consumer demand (as a result of overall price reduction for FPD panels, several industrial countries' push for digitization of TV signals, and large international sporting events) in the TV segment and FPD's high market penetration and eroding revenue base (as a result of an especially harsh price drop in the lower-end segments) in the segments for computer monitors and mobile and handheld displays.

Today, FPDs have gained mainstream acceptance. As the price of LCD technology continues to fall, consumers have decided that flat-panel technology is at last affordable. Yet manufacturers cannot sustain price decreases indefinitely, and how they react to this fact will set the tone for the general deployment of FPD technology. LCD technology is and will continue in the foreseeable future to be the dominant FPD technology, in terms of both volume and revenue. The increasing adoption of OLED displays by mobile-handset and handheld-device manufacturers will help to push technology development forward, leading to a large-area OLED display. In addition, the emergence of e-paper displays in applications such as electronic signage, smart cards, retail-counter tags, electronic-document readers, and other paper replacements adds to the diversity and will be a boost for the overall FPD industry. These developments, along with complementary research into fundamental display electronics, will ensure that FPDs become an increasingly familiar and important part of people's business, entertainment, and daily lives.