With the exception of ePaper, all flat-panel display applications are dominated by some version of LCD technology. For those of us who believe that plasma technology is still superior for large-screen television, this provokes a good deal of head-shaking and spirited after-dinner discussions.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

But despite the fact that plasma has only about 10% of the large-screen TV market, it has a price advantage at 50 inches and over, as well as - many people believe - a performance advantage in several areas, including black level and color fidelity at wide viewing angles. There’s not much argument that the way in which the pixels are addressed gives plasma a speed advantage. This provides excellent resistance to motion blur and other motion artifacts, and makes plasma an attractive platform for 3D-TV. This has not been lost on Panasonic, which is developing plasma 3D-TV energetically.

In fact, plasma is looking pretty healthy at the moment, although that market share isn’t moving much. In August, global PDP module shipments were 1.295 million units, 12% more than in July, according to Displaybank’s Monthly PDP Module Shipment Data. August revenue was $410 million, up 8%. That’s still less than a year ago, says Jusy Hong, a research analyst at Displaybank, but he expects the year-over-year numbers will have turned positive in September.

Plasma module makers realize their cost advantage now applies only to large screen sizes, and they are changing their product mixes to increase the share of panels 50 inches and over, and the share with Full HD. The changes are significant at all three of the world’s remaining PDP-TV module makers (Panasonic, Samsung SDI, and LG Electronics), but are most pronounced at LGE, whose 50-inch-and-over products (in units) rose from 21.8% of the company’s total PDP-TV output in August 2008 to 48.1% in August 2009, according to Displaybank. FHD percentage rose from 3.2% to 14.6%.

The reason these numbers look different for LG than for its competitors is that LG had decided on a contrarian strategy a couple of years ago. Where SDI and Panasonic were already pursuing the bigger-with-more-pixels approach, LG decided to make smaller PDP-TV modules and sets efficiently and cheaply. In the fall of 2007, LG introduced a 32-inch, 852×480 plasma TV in the Brazilian market, after successfully selling modules to Chinese set-makers. For a few months in 2008, Vizio successfully sold 32-inch PDP-TVs based on the LG module in North America. But LCD oversupply soon pushed the price of 32-inch LCD-TVs below that of 32-inch PDP-TVs, which quickly disappeared from the market. The company also lost a good customer for its larger panels when Vizio opted out of the PDP-TV business.

LGE was so staggered by its failed strategy (which also included low-resolution 42-inch sets and HD - rather than FHD - 60-inch sets), that there were persistent rumors the company might leave the plasma business completely. But the company’s restructuring of its product line-up has been so successful that the company’s PDP module business posted its first-ever monthly profit during the second quarter.

So plasma remains a strong competitor for LCD in large-screen TV. With the help of 3D-TV, it might even increase its market share in the future.

The only other direct-view technology on the horizon now that is potentially suitable for TV is active-matrix OLED. Sony’s over-priced, underperforming 11-inch XEL-1 is old news now. It will soon have a 15-inch competitor from LGE.

iSuppli projects that revenues for AMOLED-TV panels will increase by a factor of 200 between now and 2015, from $9.62 million to $1.80 billion in 2015, but it will still account for only a small portion of the overall flat-panel TV market. The technological and processing impediments to reaching high-volume, low-cost, large-screen AMOLED-TV production have been discussed widely, including in Display Daily. Those impediments can be overcome. But it will take a while.