he electronic-display industry has moved from slow to major growth in recent years. It has been truly amazing to witness, especially in light of the situation 20 years ago. Currently, the display market is expected to reach some $50 billion by the year 2000. The liquid crystal display portion of this market will increa
se steadily. Such growth is, to a large extent, the result of timely technical innovations within the industry.
Though it's impossible to predict the success of new research with total certainty, recent developments, including such products as super-thin film transistor (Super TFT) LCDs and fast-response color super-twisted nematic (STN) LCDs may become standard components in PCs.
The 1975 twisted nematic (TN) LCD led to the LCD market's opening for numeric display devices and, later, information display applications. These came about through the invention of multiplexing of amplitude selection (1973) and STN LCD (1984). The high information-content LCD market began with monochrome STN LCDs in notebook computers.
In the late 1980s, there was a great deal of activity in developing color LCDs for information display; in the 1990s, manufacturing started. Color STN LCDs and color TFT LCDs have since entered the mainstream. The LCD market, currently about $10 billion, is expected to grow to more than $
15 billion by the year 2000.
Growth of color LCDs is especially high in the PC and monitor markets. Recently, liquid crystal displays using thin-film transistors for notebook PCs have made remarkable strides in quality. At the same time, there has been growing demand for larger displays. Consequently, TFT LCDs have been poised for entry into the monitor market, which until now has been monopolized by cathode-ray tubes. Up to now, this has been at a standstill since the LCD viewing angle has been too narrow. But the industry has succeeded in resolving this problem through the innovative technology of in-plane switching (IPS) modes for Super TFT LCDs. For example, Hitachi's newly developed Super TFT LCDs deliver vertical and horizontal viewing angles of 140 degrees and retain picture quality on par with that of traditional CRTs.
STN LCDs are still popular in the multimedia market because of cost efficiency. The industry now has a new driving method using extended high-addressing technology that can dri
ve fast-response STN LCDs at high-frame frequency without increasing power consumption or crosstalk. This lets fast-response STN LCDs display clear images to produce moving pictures with reasonable recognition. Other innovations such as low power consumption and reflective mode are being developed, as well as an LCD system for high integration through "system in display" technology.
Likewise, the market is demanding higher-resolution displays and lower production costs. Further production innovations will be necessary to advance to higher throughput, super-clean processes, and lower energy dissipation.
Today's commodity LCDs are, for the most part, produced in Japan and other Asian countries. This has led to steady progress in accumulating LCD manufacturing know-how in those parts of the world. It's time for Japan to complete the infrastructure for reliable device technology and develop a technology worthy of leading the world.
The LCD industry has entered a period of steady growth. Cost reduction
is perhaps its toughest problem in competing with CRTs.
I expect to see a growing number of engineers from different areas start to work in the flat-panel display industry. I'm also looking forward to the emergence of a variety of technologies in this field and hope one day to see the golden age of the flat-panel industry.
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Future of the PC
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Read on about the "Future of the PC" from:
- Terry Bailey
, a senior VP at NEC Technologies Inc. in Boxborough, MA
- Rich Raimondi
, general manager of the business LaserJet division of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, Calif.
- Robert Gilbertson
, president and CEO of Network Computing Devices Inc. in Mountain View, CA
- Steve Luczo
, executive VP of corporate development at Seagate Technology and chief operating officer at Seagate Software in Scotts Valley, CA
- Bill Raduchel
, chief information officer of Sun Microsystems in Mountain View, CA
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he electronic-display industry has moved from slow to major growth in recent years. It has been truly amazing to witness, especially in light of the situation 20 years ago. Currently, the display market is expected to reach some $50 billion by the year 2000. The liquid crystal display portion of this market will increa
se steadily. Such growth is, to a large extent, the result of timely technical innovations within the industry.
