Future Watch

Thanks to new manufacturing facilities, choosing a thin LCD over a bulky CRT won't gouge your wallet quite as much.

LCDs have numerous advantages over CRT monitors, including a smaller footprint, lighter weight, and lower power consumption, but they are also more expensive. LCD makers such as Sharp are expected to address the price issue this year. Sharp says its new third-generation manufacturing facility lets the company mass-produce large-format LCDs for desktop PCs. Competitors such as Hitachi and Fujitsu have similar plans. Sharp hopes that in 1997, when active matrix LCD prices drop to about three times that of CRTs, it will capture at least 5 percent of the desktop monitor market, and 15 percent when prices drop to twofold over CRTs.

"I don't see a move to flat panels happening in the desktop market as quickly as our point-of-sale or industrial control environments because the business desktop market is more price sensitive," says Scott Hagermoser, product manager at MicroTouch Systems, a maker of touch-input devices. Once prices come down, announcements of systems that combine an LCD monitor, CPU, and scanner keyboard will become more commonplace.