LG Display CEO says that LCD panel prices have "reached a bottom"
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jan 19th 2009 10:41PM
posted Jan 19th 2009 10:41PM
The company may not exactly have the final say on the matter, but LG Display CEO Kwon Young-soo seems confident that the market for LCD panels is finally set to turn around, with him saying today that, "the good news is that we've reached a bottom," and that, "TV panel prices will likely stop the downward trend and recover." LG doesn't see things completely turning around overnight, however, and in the meantime it says it'll be pouring more than $400 million into a new production line designed to produce high-end LTPS LCD displays for mobile devices, which it apparently expects will be a more profitable area, and help it turn that frown upside down once more.
[Via DailyTech]
[Via DailyTech]
Recover? I'd say they are fine where they are at now, but I wouldn't be upset to see them drop a little more.
This is technology, not a house (not that that investment is going so well these days either). Prices don't suddenly reverse without innovation. I'm not buying anything LG anyways...
".. And in recent news, LG CEO added ".. lower prices are just a bag of hurt..." "
Prices reached a bottom, now my bottom's big!
"I'm not buying anything from LG anyway"
Dude, have you ever owned a laptop, cell phone or anything else with an LCD? Chances are that you've bought a device that uses an LG LCD...
They always boost the price has reached the bottom to prevent people from expecting cheaper panels, but it never works!
Everyone knows technology stuff's price fall so quick and it is unstoppable unless there is a sudden great increment in demand creating a shortage, but there are just too much panels nowadays!.
Little does he know that they can always go lower...
That's what she said.
No, that is most definitely not what she said.
You see, I was actually there, unlike you.
Did they serve Colt 45?
Dear LG Display CEO Kwon Young-soo,
In light of your company's recent guilty plea of price-fixing LED display panels, I would prefer that instead of commenting on the future price trends of LED panels you consider an alternative position: STFU.
Kindest regards,
The Consumers
Why, you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler.
Why do I keep reading Lano's remarks in a slow, Billie D Williams voice?
It takes forever to get his point, but, boy does it leave an impression.
So, what's the "lowest pricetag" an LCD can get?
$0.01
The literal lowest price tag will be the one that taped on the back of the standing base.
I think they're just trying to make up excuses to not lower their prices.
I second you on that !
"South Korea-based LG Display reported on Friday its worst-ever quarterly loss, hit by $400 MILLION U.S. PRICE-FIXING FINES and falling screen prices."
What do these fools know about market forces. They (and Sharp) just got caught price-fixing. That $400 million fine has got to hurt the bottom line just as much as falling prices. I guess they learned nothing from Samsung's memory fiasco.
God I hope not........
I was wanting 32" LCDs to go for $300........
much like 32" CRTs use too.....
I'll see what I can do...
ha ha.....
Why so serious?
Exactly what I've been banking on and waiting on forever.. I didn't buy anything black Friday or for the Christmas "Holiday for you hate mongers out there"
That's why I waited, although my $340 32" is being delivered today, so not entirely depressed that I did wait. And no, it's not a bargain-bin brand, either.
Well Black friday there were 32" Samsungs for $378 @ walmart..... thats as cheap as I have seen Name Brands go....
He is referring to manufacturing price, but he forgets that the market is overwhelmed with LCDs now. Older models will always go below manufacturing price, otherwise nobody will buy them.
If everyday prices for a 32" hover around $399 like is doing now, it is pretty good.
same thing goes for 26" that can be had for $299.
I paid $900 for my Sony 32" CRT 12 years ago at Sears.
In todays money that would be more like $1200.
And that's something that's really being forgotten. Looking back, it cost MORE a few short years ago to buy a 32" or 36" tube TV than it does now to buy a 42" or 46" flat panel. I can't believe that there are still people saying "I'll wait until the price comes down a little more" when 40" name-brand 1080p LCDs are around $700 on sale. Guys, the price has indeed come down -- quit posturing and talking about how your 15 year old set was the greatest technological achievement that man has ever assembled. Get off your wallet and go buy a new TV.
And my 27" Panasonic crt was $285 9 years ago. Strangely enough, it still has a great picture. I haven't seen a price yet that makes me want to replace it.
You mean its gonna go up? Guess I'm not buying any new LCD anytime soon.
recover? but why????
There is not error correction on component. That's ridiculous on its face. Error correction would require digital handling of data, and component is analog.
HDMI doesn't have error correction, but unlike component, it has (some) error detection.
Component might very well be lossless on your system, but it partially depends on cable length. Due to the way that baseband signals are attenuated with length, you will begin to lose horizontal detail (resolution) first. And you may not notice it even though you are experiencing it.
Digital to digital is more error proof than digital to analog to digital, in a good system. You say some TVs convert it to analog (this was common 5 years ago) before displaying it? The solution: don't get one of those TVs.
You forgot several reasons for HDCP:
1. Negotiation. Your TV can tell the outputting device what resolutions it supports. So you don't have to set it manually.
2. Audio. Lossless 5.1 or 7.1 cannot be carried over optical or coaxial digital, only over HDMI. If you want the best quality audio available with BluRay and other top-end sources, you need HDMI to carry the audio.
3. deep color and >3 channel color. To be honest, these aren't really in use by anyone I know, but component cannot carry them and HDMI can.
I'll take interest in LCD's when they approach videophile quality.
I have a 7 year old rear projection CRT TV that still blows the doors off any LCD and in some ways still surpasses even a KURO plasma.
My 7 year old rear projection CRT TV is 65" - how many LCDs are that size or larger?
My 7 year old rear projection CRT TV has SIGNIFICANTLY better motion display than ANY LCD even the new 240 Hz units.
My 7 year old rear projection CRT TV has much better black levels than even the newest LCDs.
My 7 year old rear projection CRT TV has no screen door image close up.
However my 7 year old rear projection CRT TV is almost 2 feet thick and I'd love to upgrade to something that is larger, but with at least as good of motion handling, blacks but thinner. I have no interest in replacing my 7 year old TV with something that doesn't look as good when displaying a movie.
Please LG - feel free to wake me when you have an 80" display that has all the picture quality of my 7 year old set - hell - wake me when you have a 65" set with the same picture quality as my 7 year old set (which when for about $2500 seven years ago).
Sounds to me like you are just trying to convince yourself not to buy an LCD
Because I highly doubt what you claim is true
z0phi3l, you are certainly entitled to believe what you want but if you want to know the truth - read avsforms or any videophile magazine/home theatre magazine that isn't paid for by advertisers and you can know the truth. Feel free to let me know what part you don't believe and I'll be happy to send you a link.
If you go to avsforum or hometheatrespot - you'll find all of these points have been reviewed by experts over and over again.
I'm not exactly the only one waiting for technogy to move forward. Most likely the 10G Kuro will be good enough for me to upgrade my bedroom set to and probably the 11G Kuro plasma will be at a size, price ($10K or less) and quality that I'll be ready to get one. That is of course providing Pioneer continues to make great plasmas past the 10Gs.
I'm guessing it will be at least 6 more years before LCDs are of a quality that I would want to watch however who knows what may happen to OLED or other SED-like technology by that date.
Bue, does your 7 year old CRT display have HDMI inputs? No? Well then you simply are NOT getting the best picture. Does it even have Component video? (You know, the RGB separated co-ax cables?) Not likely. You probably only have S-video and Composite. Meaning, no matter what you tell yourself, you are not getting anywhere near the picture quality of even a lower-end 720p flat screen let alone the 1080p displays...
Think .3 mpx camera or 1.3 mpx camera with the same lens in front. Which one's going to have better print quality at larger sizes? The higher resolution model of course. Your arguement only holds water if you compare it to other CRTs without progressive scan or the higher HD resolutions and in which case, yeah your TV rocks man! But I'll take my year old 42" Samsung SX07 over a big CRT any day of the week.
Personal preference I suppose but if you run a Blu-Ray player then displaying on NTSC standard (648x486) displays is a total waste of quality and you are seriously losing a LOT of sharpness, color range, etc...
Sorry to disappoint you boe but this year's 9th gen KURO will be the last that Pioneer is making themselves. After the this year's 9G KURO, Pioneer will be sourcing its plasma panels from elsewhere (Panasonic i think). This could possibly reduce the quality of the Kuro line although the effects of Pioneer moving away from plasma and towards LCD are yet to be seen.
I think you just like saying "rear projection" over and over.
@J242
HDMI is not required to get the best picture. Component is capable of sending the same 1080p signal that HDMI sends. There is actually bandwidth to spare. Here are a few reasons why HDMI is the new standard:
1) Simplicity. A single connection can carry audio and video.
2) Future Proof. Although HDMI has the capability to carry more bandwidth than component, it isn't required yet.
3) HDCP. Content protection is probably the single most influential reason of adoption.
We are led to believe that HDMI is better because it is "all digital", error proof, and required to get 1080p.
Regardless of whether the signal is digital to the display, it doesn't ensure a better picture. There are many conversions that happen in the signal path to transfer and decompress the data. Digital to digital is no more error proof than digital to analog conversion. Some HD sets will actually convert the digital signal to analog, then convert it back before it is displayed.
As far as being error proof, that's just not completely true (see above). In a typical home theater, cable runs are not long enough to worry about errors in the analog transfer. If they do occur, error correction is built into component but not HDMI.
You can get 1080p over component/vga, just not from blu-ray. You can get it from an HTPC, xbox360 with hddvd drive over vga, or PS3/XBOX360 games that support 1080p over component.
The only reason that the blu-ray standard doesn't allow 1080p over component is because Hollywood doesn't want them to, hence HDCP.
MR Ford - yes - it has DVI - which is simply HDMI without integrated sound and in case you didn't know the sound on HDMI isn't exactly all that and a bag of chips as it causes jitter. So yes I use a cable which is HDMI at the end of my prepro and DVI at the end of my TV Yes it has RGB input and svideo input.
MR Ford - yes - it has DVI - which is simply HDMI without integrated sound and in case you didn't know the sound on HDMI isn't exactly all that and a bag of chips as it causes jitter. So yes I use a cable which is HDMI at the end of my prepro and DVI at the end of my TV Yes it has RGB input and svideo input.
seriously, can we loose the Microsoft SYNC Flash Ad on the site already?
It slows down my browser every time I load the page...
Wait a month...he'll blink first.
Wait a month...he'll blink first.
I got my 60" 720p Vizio for $1899 and my 42" 1080p westington house for $440. Neither were hard to find, just local stores near me. I just wish they'd keep going bigger but keeping it cheap like vizio did. I dont know why I cant find vizio's 60" anymore, its like the stopped making it or something.
You know, part of me thinks that this is just wishful thinking on the part of a CEO hoping to boost his stock price. The other part of me thinks that my initial reaction is just wishful thinking on my part hoping prices will continue to fall. The answer, I expect, is somewhere in between.
He makes a good point about cell phones. Handsets like the Pre and iPhone have considerably larger screens than older cell phones and will likely create increased demand in the coming year. That said it seems a bit overstated to attribute a long term rise in prices to this. For starters a LG would have to sell 200 3" displays to make up for a single lost sale of a 42" television in terms of screen area. Secondly, LCD technology does not exist in a vacuum. Plasma, OLED, and SED manufacturers are all actively working towards decreasing the cost of their technology to compete with LCD in different parts of the market. While LCD has the price advantage today, it cannot stagnate for too long or else competing technologies may catch up in terms of value. This leads me to think that If the price does increase, it will be temporary. A momentary blip in profits for LG as the industry scrambles to meet demand for an emerging product category, but overall market competition will eventually force LCD prices back down.
sounds like LG is planning price fixing again. Good thing their CEO has a BIG mouth!
My name is Caboose.