In the commercial LCD flat panel display market a few years ago there were more than 50 vendors vying for market share. That was a crazy situation to say the least.
The display market was ridiculous as brands such Famous and VisionQuest went up against NEC, LG, Samsung and Viewsonic. This drove down prices and profitability, but I'm not so sure these tier two or three vendors brought any sort of quality to the market place.
Today, top brands such as NEC, LG, Samsung and Viewsonic have another problem on their hands — mobility.
Let's face some facts. Desktops are not going to be making a miraculous comeback. Customers are refreshing hardware with notebooks instead of desktops. The reasons are quite obvious: users like it, costs are low enough that it makes sense, makes people more productive and screen size is no longer an issue.
So what is happening? LG, Samsung and Viewsonic are making computing products. In the case of LG and Samsung they have notebooks and netbooks. Viewsonic is making slim line desktop systems. I still have not figured out what NEC is up to. Sales for desktop flat panel displays are not what they were a year ago. So these vendors are getting killed by notebooks.
The other problem they face is that LG, Samsung, Viewsonic computing products are not as accepted or popular as HP, Lenovo, Dell or Apple notebook products.
