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LCD Price Fixing?
bilsaysthis asks: "Bill Kearney poses a really interesting question, one which I've been puzzled by for a while too: 'What's with prices on LCD displays? On one hand a laptop can be had with UXGA resolution display for $1000. Try buying that display alone and you'll find it's also around $1000. Then there's how much they're gouging for the same resolution in an LCD television.'" Sadly enough, as much as I want one of these for my wall, the market is willing to bear these prices. How long will it be before this hardware becomes affordable?
We need an open laptop form factor...
Three requirements:
- Chassis spec
- DC power supply spec
- LCD spec
It sparked in my mind when I broke the LCD on my thinkpad... IBM wanted $900 to fix it but I was able to disassemble one of their desktop models and get the component that I required for less than $300...
Sheesh...
But can you imagine an open laptop? Neon and clear shit for days... Case modding to the extreme!
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A lot of it has to do with the old story of supply and demand. There is a very large call for LCDs for laptops, and the laptop manufacturers get them at almost cost, then intergrate them into the laptops.
However, there isn't much (comparitivly) demand for LCD computer screens, or even worse, TV screens.
When I was in singapore a few years ago, RCA input LCD screens weren't that bad a price, but the problem is that price hasn't drop that much.
It does take some more work to make a LCD screen take VGA or RCA inputs, so there is the cost the LCD is brought at (a lot more than the laptop manufacturers buy them at), and then the intergration of circuits to accept VGA or RCA input.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
I may be wrong but I was always under the impression that the LCD screens used in laptops were entirely different from the LCD screens used for monitors or TVs. I know, for example that my laptop screen does not do too well when viewed from an angle - not something I would tolerate from a monitor.
Mmmm.. Donuts
They actually have a valid point, *gasp*, I mean when I can get a laptop with an LCD near/cheaper than a LCD on its own, something is wrong. There is a demand for these displays, so manufacturers can't claim that that's the reason prices are high, so maybe price fixing could be in place.
I thought the same thing for quite a while, but then I stumbled on this at my local Walmart. For $400, I got an 18-inch LCD.
It has an analog VGA connector (a good thing for me; most of my PCs lack digital output), a 160-degree viewing angle (I didn't think that was even possible -- 180 would be viewing completely from the side), 1280x1024 native resolution, and does a great job resampling other resolutions. I can't prove it yet, but I am pretty sure it uses subpixel rendering when resizing lower resolutions.
So all the things I didn't like about LCDs a couple years ago -- limited viewing angle, bad resampling, digital-only connector, small size, and of course price -- are solved with this Walmart cheapo.
I'm sure it won't last all that long, but for the price, it's really nice, easy on the eyes, and much sharper than my last monitor (an aging Trinitron).
So, at one month old, mine has convinced me to never go back to a CRT.
Oh, and in games or full-screen video it rocks. You still only get 60 actual refreshes a second, but that's more than enough (and unlike a CRT the light is constant anyway). Fast motion can be a tiny bit blurry, but nothing like my crappy Compaq laptop... and in games, the blur actually looks better in my opinion -- more realistic (or I'm just goofy)...
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So how long have these devices been around? Laptops have been around for quite a while, remember GRID computers? Color displays almost 3/4 the of the same time. It should follow that LCD's would get bigger and cheaper over time, but no. What is keeping the prices artificially high? Price fixing is the ONLY reason. There are no others. Manufacturing problems? They are made by robots in clean rooms. What we should be seeing is 19 inch diagonal LCD screens at around $250.00 with high resolution. Perhaps you gamers expect too much, but most LCD's today play DVD's just fine with enough processing power behind them. There is no natural explanation for the high prices of any and all LCD technologies. None what so ever. All other technologies follow the trend. Start thinking about why. Mobile phones 20 years ago were hulking behemoths costing several thousands dollars and needing dedicated services to work. Twenty years later they are cheap and more powerful. Ditto for the PC and Laptop. Does anyone really believe the manufacturers of LCD planels when they say that they have to recoup imagined research and developmenet costs over such a long period of time? They are lying , and as they lie, newer technologies are making their products obsolete.
I took an international business class at RIT and I distinctly remember my professor say that there is a tarrif on lcd screens for the US market. Apparantly US lcd manufactures were loosing sales to Japanese and other foreign markets because they could produce them much cheaper. Has anyone else heard of such a thing?
I've been wondering about this for over a year, ever since I got a ThinkPad A22p, which has a GORGEOUS 15" LCD that runs native at 1600x1200.
I have a 19" CRT at home and a 21" at work, and this LCD beats both of them for quality, so i looked around to try and buy one. It literally did not exist -- you can but 19" LCDs with 1280x1024 (I suppose some people enjoy large pixels) but trying to buy one of these beautiful small LCDs was impossible. IBM doesn't sell them, nobody sells them.
I'm totally baffled by this. We would love to buy these LCDs for our desktops if we could get them for $1,000+ but as it is we keep these huge 21" 75 pound monitors on peoples desks, and most of those are run at 1280x1024 to stay readable.
I'm actually thinking about buying a cheap IBM and ripping it apart if I can get the screen cabling to go to the digital out on a GeForce card.
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There are a few things that you're not considering. They are the key differences between a laptop LCD screen and a desktop LCD.
Desktop LCDs are made to have a very high brightness and high contrast ratio. Laptop LCDs are made for low power consumption, and thus don't need as powerful lighting units.
Desktop LCDs are built to have a very wide viewing angle. This uses some fancy technology and manufacturing processes that are pretty expensive to accomplish this task. Laptop LCDs are made on purpose to have a narrow viewing angle so the guy next to you on the airplan can't see your screen. A narrow viewing angle makes the LCD's requirements much cheaper to achieve.
All I can see is that LCD producers are afraid of the price war that we have seen sometime ago among the SDRAM producers. I remember to read about the fear of some producers get out of buissines due to the small profit ranges.
What could be better? A price war? Or avoiding producers going out of bussiness?
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I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Perhaps its just that some people have more than basic high school economics and are able to recognise the difference between a functioning competative market (where the point you make is relevant), from a oligopolistic and fixed market (where supply/demand analysis is simply irrelevant.)
.....when you buy an LCD monitor, the price is artificially low. When you by products that aren't in that league, you come closer to the actual costs involved.
We all know that an automobile, in parts, is worth more than what you pay for a complete car off the lot. Try pricing the entire car, part by part, over the part's dept. counter, and then go to 3rd party suppliers, and watch how prices fluctuate. It is easy to imagine fixing if you don't understand how the market works.
Nothing's fixed, beyond the normal markets forces (supply/demand) causing prices to level for certain products, etc.
I believe the interface is almost always an LVDS thing, very similar to that used in one of the greatest desktop LCDs of all time, the SGI 1600W. The problem is that each different panel has a different set of parameters that you need to set/use with an LVDS controller and
1) the parameteres ain't easy to find publically documented
2) LVDS controllers for regular PCs (like an Nvidia card with an LVDS interface) are few, far between and not very cheap
I would desperately like to be proven wrong on this - I'd especially like to find a dvi2lvds box for a reasonable price that I could use with any of the thousand or so bare laptop LCD screens that are offered on ebay every day...
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Considering the hardware used in notebook LCDs is limited to 18-bit color (are their ANY true 24/32-bit LCDs in notebooks??) For that matter, are desktop LCDs also limited by their hardware in terms of "true" color depth?
Methinks this may be one reason for the price differential. I would imagine glass size is another factor, and performance cannot be ruled out. Any notebooks out there sporting sub-20ms response times??
I'm reviewing NEC's 30" LCD3000. With a 22ms response time and a native resolution of 1280x768, this thing is a pretty slick display. $4200 is a pretty nice lump of change...but I recall plasma's with that native rez selling for much more.
Where the hell was I going with this??
Como? Cuando? Que?
Every instance of a good being sold above its cost (or, more precisely, its marginal cost) is *not* an example of price fixing. In general, such mark-ups occur when supply is inadequate to cover existing demand. In the textbook models, it is always assumed that there are competitors with no real capacity constraints who are willing to undercut the imcumbent firms when prices are higher than cost.
... this is not price-fixing; it's just the firms earning a short-run rent until more capacity is added.
But in real life, especially in electronics markets, firms can face binding capacity constraints. A mark-up in the LCD market is an example of price-fixing only if the existing firms are creating an artificial shortage: i.e. they are explicitly or tacitly colluding to keep supply artificially low. The classic example of such efforts is OPEC and oil. However, if all firms are providing their capacity *and* the price at which quantity demanded equals quantity supplied is greater than cost
...you'll notice that a vast majority of that $1000.00 price tag on the laptop IS the LCD.
LCDs are incredibly finicky. You can get a laptop for sub-$1000, but it probably has a 15" or less screen. You can get a 15" screen for less than $250, because they're easy to make. Keep in mind that screen area increases exponentially with respect to the inch number. Not to mention that LCDs don't have the greatest fault tolerance. I recall reading somewhere that half of the LCDs they make have to be recycled because of dead pixels etc. The more screen space you have the more dead pixels, thus the more broken screens must be thrown away, so it's gonna cost you more.
Don't go on slashdot screaming "PRICE FIXING" because that's really not the case. LCD prices have dropped SIGNIFICANTLY in recent years, to the point where a 19" screen is now somewhat affordable (around $700.) I know on a limited budget LCDs may seem expensive, but they're a lot cheaper now than they were 3 years ago (probably about half the price) and prices are still falling. OLEDs will come soon and that will cause even further price drops, because the OLED manufacturing process is less sensitive than the LCD process. In short, this article never should have made it to the front page, because it really doesn't line up with the truth.
People here seem stuck on the fallacy of price having to do with cost.
;-).
There was a very enlightening article being commented on some site, which one was it... Oh, yeah this one
Here's a snippet:
"Monroe tells a pricing story that shows how even the simplest situation can confound accepted wisdom about prices. "A company is making two versions of the same product," says Monroe. "One has a little more gold and foil on it, but they're essentially the same. One is $14.95; the other is $18.95." Not surprisingly, the $14.95 item is selling better. It's also the lower-profit product.
"Then a competitor comes in with a third product. Again, it's essentially the same thing, but a fancier version. And it's much higher priced: $34.95."
For our original company, asks Monroe, "what becomes the best-seller? Why, the $18.95 version, of course."""
The gist is, price has nothing to do with cost (other, of course, that you don't want to lose money in the long run). Pricing is whatever will maximize your profit, either by selling more at a lower price, less at a higher price, charging different prices for different customers, selling at a loss now to acquire customers who will pay more later (DVDs for a penny each anyone?), or whatever you can get away with.
IMHO, LCD prices are high because people are buying. I still stick with my 19" CRT. Although I'd like to reclaim the desk space, energy savings, etc., I'm not gonna shell out big bucks for overpriced, lower refresh rate, lower resolution LCDs. Moreover, while other people do, the prices won't come down that much.
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