Taiwan: Displays go flat, CRTs diversify

Worldwide shipments of televisions reached 210 million units, of which 17 percent were LCD TVs, reports research firm Market Intelligence Center (MIC). With vertical integration taking place in the TFT LCD industry, Taiwan manufacturers now occupy 30 percent of the global TFT LCD market. With the display industry shifting to flat panels, CRT manufacturing here is nearing its end. Local CRT manufacturers are moving production lines to low-cost manufacturing bases like China.



DaPong Liu, an analyst from Witsview Technology Corp., says, “CRT investments are declining. This indicates that flat-panel displays will dominate Taiwan’s TV market.”



The top three largest CDT makers in the world are Samsung SDI, LG.Philips, and Chunghwa Picture Tube Ltd (CPT). According to DisplaySearch, these companies make up 90 percent of the world’s CDT market. Chunghwa is the major CRT maker in Taiwan. However, in 2002, the company moved the bulk of its CRT and CDT production to China, but kept its R&D department in Taiwan. The Fuzhou, China factory produces over 700,000 mono CRTs, and 16 million color CDTs per year.

Although CRT TVs will be replaced by flat-panel TVs, CRTs still dominate TV sales in growing markets like China. CCID, a

market research institute based in China, reports that thin CRT TVs account for 80 percent of the total CRT TV shipment. The size of a thin CRT is two-thirds that of a traditional CRT.









COLOR RESOLUTION

Apart from size, thin CRTs also feature improvements in color, resolution, and contrast. The majority of the products in the

market are 21-, 28-, 29- and 32-inch CRT TVs. Manufacturers anticipate that Chinese end-consumers would buy thin CRT TVs before totally going for the more expensive flat displays.



As a result, Taiwan’s home appliance companies prefer to put their resources on fast growing products like TFT LCDs. On the other hand, although the CRT TV market is saturated, high-end CRT TVs are still gaining margin. The market price for a 34-inch CDT HDTV increased last June by 14 percent over the previous months, says WitsView’s Liu. According to him, “Value-added CRT TVs, offering high resolution and storage card readers, are still classified as high-end products and give a high profit margin .”



As displays go flat, CRTs diversify. Monotube TVs and thin CRTs with better features could still survive the threat of TFT LCD dominance.