The Indian color picture tube market stood at 18 million units in 2010, a marginal 4.6 percent increase from

17.2 million units in 2009. Domestic contri-bution registered a decline, from 13.07 mil-lion units in 2009 to 12.18 million units in 2010. This year the imports grew by 4.1 per-cent, at 5.82 million units, from 4.12 million units in 2009.

There are some issues of concern here. The CRT market having been able to survive the onslaught of the many factors working against it is encouraging and indicates the uniqueness of the Indian consumer. How-ever, ELCOT is a major contributor having increased its procurement from the initial 4 million sets to 5 million sets in 2010. Mar-gins were wafer-thin and the sets did add to the bottom-line of the retailers. With Tamil Nadu free distribution at its last phase in 2011 (letters of intent have been issued for 1 million televisions, and unless there is a repeat ad hoc order, this shall be last of the ELCOT buying), the industry will have to consolidate its operations. Anil Dutt’s (Sam-tel Color) suggestion that the industry must work toward tapping the 120 million house-holds who do not possess a CTV at ELCOT price band deserves attention.

With global CRT capacities looking at down-

sizing; in the short term, the CPT industry may face some inventory off-loading at low-er prices internationally. Steady supplies of CRT components are slowly becoming an issue of concern as are rising prices of raw materials.

In spite of the government having intro-duced anti-dumping duties, imports have increased. This indicates toward some mon-ey being siphoned off overseas; as domestic picture tube prices are marginally lower than the imported ones.

The large screen sizes are fast disappearing and getting replaced by LCD panels.

Samtel commands a 50-percent market share and JCT Electronics is at 17.7 per-cent. The CRT CTV industry continues to depend on overseas suppliers for 32.32 per-cent of their requirement.

Samtel Color has introduced a variant on the 14-inch round slim tube and are plan-ning to introduce 21-inch ultra slim pin-free picture tubes. JCT Electronics has recently launched 21-inch ultra slim tubes.

A size-wise analysis reveals that the mar-ket is dominated by small sizes. The 14-inch and 15-inch CRT CPT dominate the seg-ment with 51.5 percent share ELCOT pro-curement could take some credit for this.

Color Picture Tubes

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The mid size, 20-inch, 21-inch flat and 21-inch ultra slim picture tubes, together ac-count for 46.72 percent of the market. The balance 1.78 percent is contributed by the larger than 29-inch screen sizes.

The consumer electronics industry is keen on maintaining presence in this segment too, as the growing demand from the tier II and tier III cities and rural and semi-urban mar-kets have preference for this category as a first buy. With the anticipated GDP growth, as a natural progression, affordability will increase which will keep the CRT TVs alive for a few more years.

Globally, Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. reg-istered losses of US$ 200 million in Q4 2010, as asset write-offs from its cathode-ray-tube (CRT) screen division and foreign-exchange losses adding to an already weak bottom line. The company’s CRT losses expanded to US$ 35.68 million in Q4 2010, from losses of US$ 2.2 million in the prior quarter. In Q1 2010, Chunghwa Picture expects shipments of computer and TV panels to grow 13 per-cent to 6 million units from 5.3 million units in Q4 2010 on the back of rising demand for energy-saving LED panels and some new models.

Samsung SDI Co. announced in April 2010 that it would close its cathode ray tube plant in Berlin in 2011, citing CRT sales decline and weakening profitability. This facility saw sales figures shrink steadily over the years in Europe from US$ 419.96 million in 2002 to US$ 318.64 million in 2003, and US$ 279.56 million last year.

LCD PanelsThe LCD panels’ global market in 2010 grew by 26 percent to 665 million units as against 527 million units in 2009, thanks to a strong growth in TV, notebook PC, tablet PC and public display applications.

The LCD TV panel market grew by 36 per-cent to 221 million units in 2010 from 163 units in 2009. Interestingly, 2010 marks the first year that LCD TV panels surpassed LCD monitor panels.

With the LCD TV panels moving closer to 200 million-mark annually, the manufactur-ers are facing maturity in some developed countries. With a view to recreating and stimulating demand, the LCD TV panel makers are shifting to high-end features in developed countries. Enhancements as 3D,

480 Hz frame rate, ultra-slim form factors and direct-lit LED backlights are being in-troduced. The panel makers are also devel-oping lower-cost designs with lower bright-ness and color gamut for emerging markets like India, Brazil, China and Russia. This is re-shaping the panel technology and busi-ness.

The continuing transition to LED backlights is motivating LCD TV panel makers to de-velop their supply chains to reduce the cost of LED-backlit panels. These panel makers are targeting aggressive growth for LED panel shipments, with plans to exceed 50 percent penetration in the second quarter of 2011.

Samsung, LG Display, AUO, Sharp, and Chimei Innolux have the highest penetra-tion. Besides, Samsung and Sharp aimed to ship more LED LCD TVs than CCFL panels in the last quarter of 2010. LCD TV panel maker Sharp is the only player focusing on direct-type LED backlights, as against the more common edge-lit structure.

In December 2010, Samsung Electronics Co. acquired Dutch firm Liquavista BV, as it seeks to expand in the next generation dis-play technologies. Liquavista offers a new type of electronic display technology, elec-trowetting, which operates in transmissive, reflective, transparent and transflective modes that enables the creation of displays with bright, colorful images with reduced power consumption. The technology offers more than twice the transmittance of LCD technology and is able to operate at low fre-quencies. Since electrowetting can be manu-factured by modifying existing LCD produc-tion lines, Samsung will be able to realize significant synergies through the utilization of existing manufacturing equipment and capabilities.

Taiwan’s Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) announced its LCD manufacturing partner-ship with Pixel Qi in December too. The com-panies are developing three new screens of various sizes which will be available in the market in 2011. The combination of Chun-ghwa Picture Tubes expertise in volume LCD manufacturing and Pixel Qi’s innova-tive low power and sunlight readable display technology promises innovative LCDs. CPT manufactures nearly 40 million screens per month, and is the number 2 mid-size LCD manufacturer in the world.

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The makers are expanding and in-creasingly utilizing Gen 8 fabs for LCD TV panel production. Forty-one percent of LCD TV panels were produced on Gen 8 lines in the third quarter of 2010. The LCD panel prices are stabilizing as there is little inventory pressure pushing panel prices down.

Taiwanese manufacturers of LCD panels are now under pressure fol-lowing the European Commission’s announcement in December 2010 that five Asian electronics companies would be fined US$ 866 million for operating a price-fixing cartel that harmed European buyers of televi-sion sets, computers, mobile phones and other products that use the key LCD component.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest flat-panel maker, received full immunity from fines under the EC’s leniency program, as it was the first to provide information about the cartel to government investigators. The commission accused the six com-panies of fixing prices on LCD panels between October 2001 and Febru-ary 2006. The cartel members met around 60 times, mainly in hotels in Taiwan, for what they called the Crystal meetings.

Among the five affected firms, Taiwan-based Chimei Innolux Corp. received the heaviest fine of US$ 401 million. The EC fined LG Display US$ 292.4 million, AU Optronics Corp. (AUO) US$ 159.12 million, Chunghwa Pic-ture Tubes (CPT) US$ 12.24 million, and HannStar US$ 10.88 million. The EC took the companies’ sales revenue from panels into account when setting the fines, which were re-duced in exchange for the companies’ cooperation: LG by 50 percent, AUO by 20 percent, and CPT by 5 percent.

Taiwan had launched its own inves-tigation into the LCD cartel in 2005 and closed it in 2008. Products were mainly sold to both the US and Eu-rope. Therefore, Taiwanese consum-ers were little affected.

The US fines so far have been about US$ 893 million, but the Department

of Justice is putting great pressure on AUO to plead guilty and pay a big fine. Research shows that in inter-national cartel cases, private settle-ments, on average, cost all the mem-bers of cartels three or four times as much as their government fines. If they are able to pay it, the LCD mak-ers might pay more than US$ 2 bil-lion in private settlements a couple of years from now.

The cartel’s collapse comes at the start of a big push into mainland China. In March 2010, AUO an-nounced plans to build a plant in eastern China. Samsung plans to in-vest more than US$ 2 billion to build a production line in eastern China, and LG will spend US$ 4 billion in southern China. Japan’s Sharp Corp. is also negotiating with China on building a plant.

PlasmaIn comparison to 2009, when plasma TV business faced tough times due to weak economic conditions and threat from LCD TVs; there was a signifi-cant growth in shipments of plasma TV panels in 2010.

Consumers chose plasma TV panels as they proved to be the most afford-able large flat panel TVs and had su-perior 3D performance compared to LCD TVs.

Globally, plasma TV panel ship-ments increased to 19.1 million units in 2010 from 14.8 million units in 2009, whereas 15.1 million units were shipped in 2008.

In the last quarter of 2010, plasma TV panel shipments grew by 9 percent to 5.2 million units. Major plasma mak-ers operated at maximum capacity and a new entrant, COC, began mass production of 42-inch panels in China in the last quarter of 2010.

In 2010, the top plasma TV panel suppliers on a unit basis were Pana-sonic, which grew 22 percent, Sam-sung SDI, which grew 37 percent and LGE, which grew 30 percent.

After the plasma TV panel makers exited the 32-inch market, due to low LCD pricing, leading plasma TV

brands focused on the 50-inch-plus market where they remained more competitively priced than LCD.

The share of plasma TV panel ship-ments at 50-inch-plus reached 40.8 percent in 2010 from 38 percent in 2009. Samsung introduced a 50-inch 720p 3D plasma TV for the first time in the second half of 2010.

With 3D functionality, plasma can reposition itself as a long lasting technology in the TV industry. The plasma TV brands are entering 2011 with 3D across their product portfo-lios.

Glass ShellVideocon is one of the largest CPT glass manufacturers with a high level of experience and technical expertise operating through Poland and India.

Nippon Electric Glass Co. also caters to the this segment. As the market de-mand shifts from developed countries to emerging economies, the market for glass substrates for FPDs is ex-pected to increase in these countries.

With LCD TVs to remain a favored TV technology in coming years, Corn-ing is planning to build an US$ 800 million advanced glass plant in Bei-jing with operations to start in early 2012.

Future trends indicate that Gorilla glass invented in 1962 failed to find commercial use and languished in a research lab for almost half-century. Corning is hoping the latest trend in TVs-frameless flat-screens that could be the mistaken for chic glass artwork on a living room wall-could catapult it to multibillion dollar sta-tus. Hard to break, dent or scratch, Gorilla glass generated around US$ 250 million in sales in 2010, but soar-ing demand could boost revenue to US$ 1 billion this year, as it begins to migrate from cell phones to high-end TVs. Sony Corp. announced in January 2011 that its Bravia line of 42-inch and larger televisions are de-signed using 0.7 mm Corning Gorilla glass.

Research conducted in February 2011

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