NEC lures Apple Computer in new OEM display thrust

Electronic News, Oct 18, 1993 by David Kellar

TOKYO--NEC Corp. is revving up a new line of liquid crystal displays based on full-color analog driver LSI technology. In its push to become a major player in the active-matrix LCD market, NEC has also lined up Apple Computer to use its 9.4-in. color displays in a new PowerBook model to be rolled out this fall.

NEC is making much progress in its drive to compete with the likes of Sharp and the IBM/Toshiba joint venture Display Technologies; it is achieving yield rates of 80% or more as its main LCD manufacturing plant in Kagoshima and is expanding other production lines. Still, NEC will not be able to drop prices as quickly as targeted earlier this year (EN, Aprilk 12).

NEC earlier this month unveiled a new laptop engineering workstation sporting a full-color high-resolution 13-in. TFT lCD screen driven by analog driver LSIs. The EWS4800 150LT, based on a 64-bit MIPS R4000PC CPU, can display images at resolutions up to 1,280-by-1,024 pixels in 16.7 million colors. It is scheduled to start shipping in January.

While unveiling the system, NEC officials said they planned to erely more on the analog driver technology in the future. "What isn't often mentioned but is critical to widespread use of color LCDs in the future is analog full-color technology," said NEC Kagoshima President Tsunekiyo Iwakawa.

Mr. Iwakawa claims that analog full-color LCD technology will not cost much more than current digital LCDs, which he said generally reproduce only 4,096 colors. The switch to analog will take place quickly--within about a year--making color notebooks even more popular, Mr. Iwakawa predicted.

According to NEC, the total TFT LCD market will more than triple over the next two years, growing from approximately US$1.7 billion this year to $4.5 billion in 1995 and $6.4 billion in 1997.

NEC's Kagoshima facility is building a new line that will boost production capacity from 40,000 panels/month to 100,000 panels/month in December. With a new line to be constructed at its Akista plant next year and further planned expansion at Kagoshima, NEC intends to have the capability to produce 280,000 displays per month by 1997, said Kuniyuki Hamano, manager of NEC's color LCD engineering department.

While only 15% of NEC's color LCD sales are currently sold outside the company, NEC plans to hoost this figure to 30% by next March. Playing heavily in these plans is a major contract with Apple Computer.

Unlikely Sharp, NEC is focusing its efforts on one flavor of LCD technology. "TFTism' is our policy. Since we believe active-matrix TFT color LCDs for personal computer displays will be the primary LCD market of the future, we're concentrating our efforts in that area," said Hidehiko Katoh, chief manager of technology in NEC's color LCD division.

Despite NEC's predictions earlier this year that NEC could lower color TFT LCD prices to $400 per display by 1995, Mr. Iwakawa said this goal has proven elusive because prices of components such as color filters and drivers have not been falling. As a result, marker prices of color TFT dispkays are only expected to drop from the current $1,500 level to approximately $1,000 by 1995, he said.

Another reason for the slow price drop, Mr Iwakawa said, is that current demand is far outstripping production, giving LCD manufacturers leeway to set prices pretty much as they please.