Influence of Product Architecture on the Competition Between LCD and PDP Technologies

Abstract

Abstract:The popularity of flat TVs began to reach its stride at the beginning of the 21st century, and the market size has expanded rapidly. The plasma display panel (PDP) technology was predominant initially, but the liquid crystal display (LCD) technology has presently overtaken PDP technology. Most of the actual conditions for the competition between LCD and PDP have not been clarified. In this study, our aim was to understand the factors because of which LCD overtook PDP in terms of the product architecture and to clarify the architecture's influence on the competition between LCD and PDP. The results showed that PDP and LCD have integral-type and modular-type architectures, respectively, and that this difference has had a big influence on the market competition between the two technologies. Key Words: Product architecture; LCD; PDP. IntroductionThe popularity of flat TVs began to reach its stride at the beginning of the 21st century, and the market size expanded rapidly to replace cathode ray tube (CRT) technology and fill the newly expanding market for large-sized TVs of 40 inches or more. Among the flat TV technologies, the plasma display panel (PDP) technology was predominant initially, but liquid crystal display (LCD) technology has presently overtaken PDP technology. However, most of the actual conditions of the competition between LCD and PDP have not been clarified. Although many studies have been carried out on the LCD industry, most were related to its development or the competition between Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese firms [1][2][3][4][5] ; there has been no research aimed at clarifying the factors because of which LCD has overtaken PDP. The principles and structures of LCD and PDP are completely different, so a difference in product architectures seems to exist. We examined the influence of the product architecture on the competition between LCD and PDP and aimed to understand the factors because of which LCD has overtaken PDP in terms of the product architecture. Our findings show that there was a difference in product architecture between LCD and PDP that had a big influence on the market competition between LCD and PDP. This case study is a very