LCD Pricing Update

 

November Update: Toshiba announced a super high res 22″ monitor, and I wanted to see how it would stack up in price.  Interestingly, it comes in dead on with 30″ monitors on per pixel price.

 

September Update: Few drops in the 24 to 28 range, especially that 24″, once again MicroCenter with a rebate $299 + $20 shipping.  There will soon be a 1920×1200 22″ monitor as well for the pixel freaks.  It’s interesting to note, the 24″ monitor is now almost equal per pixel to a 22″ wide.  $250 by Christmas looks very likely.  I’m not expecting them to drop much after that however.  The PC systems bundlers (Dell, Gateway) will likely start to include 24″ monitors for Christmas computers, and that will keep demand high enough that prices will stabilize at $250.  What will happen is the top of the line 24″ monitors will drop because it’s hard to compete with bundled monitors.

 

Update: Microcenter is selling a 24″ Acer at a $100 less than you would have found it just 2 months ago.  It’s a rebate, but an excellent deal still.  Usually these large rebate offers precede a whole scale price drop, which 24″ monitors are ripe for.  I still expect low-end prices to hit $250 by Christmas or post Christmas.  Still waiting for the 30″ monitors to drop.

 

If you want pixels and lots of em, choose the 24″ monitor.  If you’re a space hog, like me, a pair of 22″ monitors is a much better choice.

 

Size	Surface Area	Lowest Price	$/sq in.	Resolution	$/10k pixels	dpi
19 wide	164 sq in.	$159	$0.97	1440×900	$1.28	89.3
19 square	176 sq in.	$169	$0.96	1280×1024	$1.29	86.3
20 wide	179 sq in.	$159	$0.89	1680×1050	$0.90	99.0
20 square	192 sq in.	$196	$1.02	1400×1050	$1.30	87.5
20 square	192 sq in.	$276	$1.44	1600×1200	$1.44	100
22 wide	207 sq in.	$218	$1.05	1680×1050	$1.24	90.0
22 hi res	207 sq in.	$2,783	$13.44	3840×2400	$3.05	210
24 wide	258 sq in.	$419 $348 $299	$1.62 $1.35 $1.16	1920×1200	$1.82 $1.51 $1.30	94.3
26 wide	303 sq in.	$615 $608	$2.03 $2.01	1920×1200	$2.67 $2.64	87.1
28 wide	335 sq in.	$668 $641 $610	$1.99 $1.91 $1.82	1920×1200	$2.90 $2.78 $2.65	80.9
30 wide	404 sq in.	$1190 $1250	$2.94 $3.09	2560×1600	$2.90 $3.05	100.6

Current LCD Pricing Metrics

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HD-DVD winning?

Since I posted my predictions on the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray war, it’s been rather hard to tell whether I was right or wrong.  One thing I didn’t count on was the combo drive makers bumbling the job so badly and taking more than a year to release.  Today there are two players, the LG BH100 and the Samsung BD-UP5000.  Both are still very expensive, which would have worked fine if they were released 6 months earlier, but now Blu-Ray players can be had for $600.

Still I have to wonder if they are part of the motivation for Paramount and Dreamworks dropping Blu-Ray in favor of HD-DVD.  The same logic stands, although I expect a good part of this decision is cost, the cost in stamping discs being higher for Blu-Ray.  I expect the way they see it, there’s not much advantage to them to produce Blu-Ray discs since that market’s probably still willing to plop down an extra $200 for a HD-DVD player if they really want a movie.  Sales of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray titles doesn’t appear to be linked to format, but content, which shouldn’t be half as surprising as it is.

At this point, I think HD-DVD has a stronger position, but honestly, both formats are doing so poorly that a third format could easily come in to trump them both if someone did something like release a greater than 1080p resolution TV.  There has to be some advantage a third format could exploit, but if such an opportunity arose, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray would be nearly helpless to fight it off.

Another threat which could defeat both is IP based movies, which if done well, and done cheaply has a similar opportunity today.  I suppose this was what Jobs was hoping for with Apple TV, but Apple failed to do it well, and thus missed the boat.

LCD Monitor Trends

When first introduced LCD monitors were expensive and small.  But even then the long term value was obvious.  I remember explaining why LCDs would change the monitor production game and drive costs down, rather than up.

Today it’s quite obvious that was right.  When LCDs were introduced 20″ CRT’s had been holding at $1000 for several years.  There wasn’t much motivation for manufacturers to lower prices since they couldn’t sell larger monitors, and the production of CRTs required a number of diverse parts and produced a bulky, heavy device that was hard to ship, stock and sell.

Size	Surface Area	Lowest Price	$/sq in.	Resolution	$/1k pixels	dpi
19 wide	164 sq in.	$160	$0.98	1440×900	$0.12	89.3
19 square	176 sq in.	$175	$0.99	1280×1024	$0.13	86.3
20 wide	179 sq in.	$184	$1.02	1680×1050	$0.10	99.0
20 square	192 sq in.	$199	$1.03	1400×1050	$0.14	87.5
22 wide	207 sq in.	$229	$1.11	1680×1050	$0.13	90.0
24 wide	258 sq in.	$459 $429	$1.78 $1.66	1920×1200	$0.20 $0.19	94.3
26 wide	303 sq in.	$673 $620	$2.22 $2.05	1920×1200	$0.29 $0.27	87.1
28 wide	335 sq in.	$689	$2.06	1920×1200	$0.30	80.9
30 wide	404 sq in.	$1270 $1190	$3.14 $2.94	2560×1600	$0.31 $0.29	100.6

Current LCD Pricing Metrics

 

Today, a 20″ LCD goes for about $200, and the prices continue to drop.  Partly because LCD manufacturing is based on just a few types of parts, to which efficiency engineering can achieve dramatic results.  A bigger part is people are buying 30″ LCDs.  When higher price items sell, manufacturers are forced to compete in these arenas which drives down costs for 20″ items too.  Eventually 22″ monitors enter the mainstream as they did 12 months ago.

24″ monitors are likely to cross this boundary soon.  Right now you can find $450 24″ monitors.  More importantly you can find at least one $700 28″ monitor.  That Viewsonic monitor will put a lot of pressure on the higher end 24″ monitors.  Low end 24″ monitors will be pressed low enough to slip into the mainstream price range.  High end 24″ monitors will follow in rubber band fashion.  So by Christmas 2007 I expect to see a $250-$350 price range for all 24″ monitors.

One question is, what will happen to the 30″ LCDs?  Surely they’ll drop south to $1000, but unless 36″ desktop LCDs or something like it shows up, and has some demand manufacturers may not be compelled to drop the 30″ prices below the $1000 mark.  Perhaps it will be through differentiation of 2560×1600 30″ LCDs and higher resolution 3840×2400 monitors (150 dpi).

Update: The 28″ Viewsonic in two weeks depressed Acer’s 26″ substantially, and slightly affected 24″ monitors as well.

Is DPI growing?

Jeff Atwood points out the lack of substantial dpi progress over the last 20 years.  One day that trend will end, but it’s not likely to be the next 2-3 years.

For monitors the focus on dpi has waxed and waned.  During the end of the CRT era, dot pitch and dpi gained a focus they hadn’t seen in years prior, or since.  Desks wouldn’t support more than a 21″ monitor (or backs for that matter).  Focus then shifted from size to quality of many sorts, dpi being one.

LCD’s opened the game up, by allowing for larger monitors or in cases like mine, more monitors.  I use two 20″ LCD’s and a 22″ widescreen.  That may sound outrageous, but the cost of 3 ($650) is less than the one 21″ CRT ($1,000) I bought 12 years ago and half what one 30″ ($1,300) LCD costs today.

The thing that will eventually disrupt dpi stagnation, is size stagnation.  However, for the moment there’s still plenty of room on my desk.  I’m not likely to ever exceed four monitors (I think three is just right), but I won’t be surprised if in another 2 years I upgrade the sizes.

Take a look at Microsoft Surface to see a sign of the times to come.  Surface is interesting in a number of ways, but what I want to point out is the size of the display, and that’s just for ordering dessert.  If you can use 30″ to choose between the chocolate mouse and tiramisu then a 60″ screen is a reasonable thought for work.

Some sci-fi shows/movies do a good job of showing the concept.  Minority Report has a scene were Cruise must be using hundreds of square feet of screen space.  As LCD’s are today I’d hit a limit around two 30″ screens, but tech like Dell’s ultra-thin LCD change things a lot because then I can easily take them horizontal as well as vertical.

Today a 22″ widescreen is the same price a 19″ square was a year ago.  A 19″ square (actually 4:5) is about 176 sq in., a 20″ wide is about 206 sq in. giving a 17% increase last year, or doubling every 5 years (remember compounding).

That is a lot slower than the 18 month transistor count trend.  To go from a 20″ standard to a  30″ (2.25 times the size) standard will take a little over 5 years.  To go from 30″ to 60″ will take another 10 years.

So 15 years from now desktops will begin to force large jumps in dpi, but until then it will be size constrained devices, such as laptops, cell phones or e-books which will promote higher dpi.  You might think advances in this area would spill over to desktop parts, but so far it’s yet to happen.

There is however, a different way to look at the question.  One could argue that the similarities between LCD manufacture and chip manufacture suggest the pixel density should double at the same rate as transistor density.  That would put 200dpi 3 years away.  The fact that hasn’t happened yet makes you wonder about that theory, but it’s not entirely baseless, so you also must wonder why it hasn’t held true so far.

Need more RAMDACs

Ever since the GeForce 4 was released in April 2002 it has been a standard feature for non-integrated GPU’s to have dual integrated RAMDAC’s.  This simple feature insured that a great deal of cheap dual monitor capable video cards became available.  Only the most miserly of manufactures would omit the extra physical connector required.  So it became quite easy to find video cards with dual VGA outputs.

As the DVI transition began, many or most manufacturers chose to place one VGA and one DVI connector on cards, but they retained they ability to operate independently.  So you were able to hook up one VGA and one DVI monitor, or with the right adapters two of either.  

Many, maybe 30%, of LCD monitors had both DVI and VGA inputs as well.  I managed to take advantage of these two features myself for several years by having two computers with DVI/VGA outputs and two monitors with DVI/VGA inputs.  With this setup I was able to at a touch of a button switch either monitor to either computer.  I could have one monitor each, or two for either.  The OS would continue to see both monitors, regardless of which input was switched on, so it worked smoothly and was ultra convenient.  I should also thank Dell for not only putting both inputs on, but making the switch a single button, something that my current monitors don’t do nearly as easy (though now I have three).

So.. this was all well and good, but as I said, now I have three monitors, plus a LCD rear projection HDTV hooked up via component output.  As you can imagine two RAMDACs is no longer good enough.  I’ve gotten by because my motherboard had onboard video and this nifty SurroundView feature that let me use a expansion card and the onboard video.  But it’s not a well know feature, and not well beloved by the ATI support team, so in Vista it’s not working perfectly.

The obvious solution is to replace my motherboard with one with dual PCI express and get two real graphics cards, but that’s not why I’m writing this.

What I’m wondering is, why are there only two RAMDAC’s still, 5 years later?  Everything else has doubled, tripled, quadrupled or more, so why not the RAMDAC’s?  It’s quite common to find a video card with DVI/VGA/S-Video connector’s, like the one I have, but the unfortunate truth is you can only use 2 of the 3 at once.  The laptop I recently purchased has all three plus the built in LCD, so you have to choose which 2 of the 4 possibilities you’ll use.  I don’t know a ton about component prices but my guess is that if RAMDAC’s were cheap enough in 2002 to put two of them into the GPU by now they should be cheap enough that four would be economical.

With this we wouldn’t have to choose which outputs.  This isn’t even mentioning that I think Dual Link DVI ports use up both RAMDAC’s to drive really huge monitors (not sure about this though).

So how bout it ATI (AMD)? (or NVidia?)  If there are three outputs, how about they all work at the same time?

In search of bits (an additional 32, to be exact)

Jeff Atwood writes about the ~3.5GB barrier, of which I’m unfortunately familiar.  Even with a 64-bit CPU and a 64-bit OS my BIOS has held me back.

Now what, on a desktop would one need more than 3.5GB for today?  Well a perfect example came up this weekend as I’ve been setting up a whole test server environment, complete with 5 machines in VMs.  I managed to do it in the measly 3.5GB, but that once I loaded that fifth and final VM, you could tell the system was finally feeling the strain.  Another 0.5GB (or better yet another 2.5GB) and there would have been no problem.

But the work is now complete, the VM’s saved to hard disk, but it’s a clear demonstration that the 32bit barrier is not just a server issue.  Admittedly, it’s at least another year, possibly three before the average PC user begins to grumble about that barrier, but for technical people who really use their machines, it’s here now or just over the horizon.

Since these are the type of people who guide the rest of the industry, companies really need to get off their butts and start making 64 bit compatible drivers, tools, and the whole bag.  Many are, but many aren’t. 

If the gamers, the developers, the IT staff abandon your product, you’re as good as gone.

iPhone will not sell 10 million units in 2007

I have another little prediction for 2007. The iPhone will receive great reviews (already has), huge amounts of fan press, and lots of excitement, but it will not sell 10 million units, or anything close to it. There are simply too many factors which make it a bad choice for most of the market.

The biggest problem, or at least the one that excludes the most users, is cost. The high price tag excludes the majority of the near billion per year cell phone market. If this were the only problem 1% of this market would still be reasonable, but it’s worthwhile noting how big an impact the price has on that rather large number. Consider that the average price of a phone in 2006 was $129 wholesale. SmartPhones, many much cheaper than the iPhone, and all less expensive, accounted for 15% or 123 million sales in 2005. Palm for example averaged $307 per unit in 2006.

This might not seem that far from the $499/$599 price of the iPhone, but remember, the wholesale price is likely quite a bit higher than $499 since that it the price with a 2 year contract.

Take all of that and combine it with the second problem, Cingular exclusivity. Cingular is big in the U.S., but it’s still only a bit more than 55 million subscribers or around 30% of the market in 2005. To suggest that the iPhone will convert 20% of Cingular subscribers is ridiculous.

I’d guess Apple has some international plans, but since I’m not sure what they are, but even if there was a 30% market share provider in each country, the pool of potentials is down to around 35 million users that Apple would have to convince to spend an extra $200-$300. How they expect to do this with $10 million of them I have no clue.

Add to this some the rumors that it won’t support Outlook, among other critical enterprise user features, and you start to wonder what is the target market for the iPhone.

It seems very much to me like the target market is that kid from the Mac commercials. But how many kids like that are there? Are there 10 million of them? I don’t think so. And those kids today aren’t buying $500 phones for the most part, they’re buying RAZR’s, that are $100 or even free. Maybe it’s possible to upsell them some, but at the rate of 10 million in one year? Once again, I don’t think so.

Still, the iPhone will probably end up a success for Apple overall. At $499, or whatever their wholesale price is, they don’t need to sell 10 million. Plus with Apple’s locked in, we own everything, and control all the software policy, Apple will probably make another couple hundred at least off each subscriber through iTunes sales, and software sales and licensing fees, when their users start to wonder how to get GPS support, or how to connect with Outlook, or view a Word/Excel document, or play some games. To be honest, if Apple reaches anywhere near their target, I’d expect them to come out with their own Skype-like service, and start charging a leg for it (just under the arm and leg the existing cell providers charge).

I should also mention that yes, the iPhone looks to be an excellent piece of engineering. It’s surrounded by a regular Apple sea of bad business and false idealism, but that doesn’t mean that if you find the phone itself attractive, and worth the cash you shouldn’t hop out and buy one. Just realize that in this case your not jumping into the wave of the future, like where the iPod went. Instead your jumping into a tightly regulated niche that will likely find itself sorely challenged even at the outset by the more open alternatives.

LCD Price Changes

I knew the day would one day come. Anyhow, 20″ LCDs have really plummeted in price in the last 2 months. It used to be a 19″ LCD was $200-350 depending on brand and milliseconds. The cheapest 20″ LCD was about $500, which was a pretty steep jump.

Well, no longer. 20″ LCD’s today have dropped under $300, and the bargains like this ViewSonic are about $250. So now my upgrade recommendation must upgrade. 20″ monitors are the right thing to buy for desktops (two is best of course).

Notably, not far above there is one outlier in the 22″ range. Most 22′s are $400 or more (which is still far better than than $700-$1000 of not long ago), but one Acer (AL2216WBD) goes for $330. That’s a good sign, although I’d still recommend the 20 because a wide 22 is less than 7% more space for a 32% price hike. Widescreens aren’t IMHO as good for business stuff either, unless you only get one, which you shouldn’t ;p Besides that when you look at the space provided remember that a 20″ 3:4 monitor will be about 14% larger than a 20″ 16:9 monitor. Consumers are starting to wise up to this and now widescreens are selling at less than squares for the same diagonal, rather than a reverse premium.

The 19″ to 20″ jump at 3:4 is about 12% more space, for about 25% price hike. Considering the relative cheapness of both, I’d say 20″ is the right choice.

I should caveat all of this by stating these recommendations for getting average work done. Graphics artists might find more preference to wide, and gamers are going to be more about the size of their one monitor (and the refresh rate), than about how many they can afford.

The Virtues of Dual Monitors

Do you have enough desk space for this? While we may not all need one of these at the low price of $5,999, I am still amazed at how slow most technology companies are upon figuring out the virtues of dual monitors setups with cheap, affordable $200 19” LCD’s. There are plenty of valid studies showing significant performance gains from dual monitors in comparison to single monitors, and when you compare that $200 to an employee’s salary it requires an incredibly small percentage gain to be a good value. If you figured an employee cost at $100,000 per year (which is probably low once benefits, taxes and such are added), you need a 0.2% productivity gain to justify the cost. And that’s assuming you need to buy a new monitor ever year!

If you work with computers for a living, even if it’s not programming, you should probably consider this advice. There is a high degree of probability your computer already has the video card necessary. If it does, setting up two monitors is about as easy as it gets.

Super cool VOIP adapter

I stumbled upon this really cool device that will (when released) allow you to do some awesome things.

For me, one of the first attractive parts is the ability to use my SIM to connect to the phones in my house, and callout or receive calls using my cell phone number. I’ve never really felt cellphones are as comfortable to use as a big old handset. I think it would be tough to do this because cell phones have the disadvantage of being designed to be small. Of course, maybe I should just try a bluetooth headset, but so far I have abstained.

Beyond, that, the device does a ton of other things as well. It also allows calling in/out over skype via, call forwarding, SMS/Chat forwarding, and can even use a POTS line too.