At Osaka Sharp unveiled a 28in LCD prototype – the world’s largest direct-view LCD screen

At Osaka, Sharp unveiled a 28in LCD prototype – the world’s largest direct-view LCD screen. Sharp markets a 14in LCD TV in Japan that costs around pounds 4,000. Samsung has produced a 22in LCD panel that took four years to develop and had a budget of pounds 13m. But these so-called active LCDs are difficult and expensive to produce – especially when the screen is larger than six inches across.Isamu Washizuka, Sharp’s senior executive director for LCD business, says that LCD prices are going down by 15 per cent per year, and that the yield rate (the number of fault-free LCD panels made during a production run) is “better than 50 per cent” Even so, large LCD screens are not cheap. The best LCD screens are controlled by hundreds of thousands of transistors, which give very good picture quality.

Sharp, the world’s leading LCD producer, estimates that the global market for LCDs will be worth pounds 4bn in 1996 LCDs are small, thin, light and use little power. Little wonder that portable devices such as notebook computers and electronic organisers use other types of display systems.The leading flat-screen technology is the liquid crystal display (LCD), first used in wristwatches and calculators, but now found in devices such as camcorders and notebook PCs. The takings for the winners will be vast, as wall-hanging televisions and slimline computer monitors, as well as portable devices such as electronic newspapers, become consumer essentials.
The cathode ray tube, used in most television sets, is more than 80 years old and is easily the best display technology when it comes to colour, brightness, contrast, resolution and price But the CRT is also large, heavy and power-hungry. It already exists, however, as one of the combatants in a battle that will decide the flat-screen technology of the future. At the Japan Electronics Show, held in Osaka in late October, three rival systems were on display as companies staked their claims for the multibillion-pound market. The really clever technology here is not the electronic newspaper, but the roll-up screen on which it appears. A commuter pulls a small computer out of his pocket and unrolls a screen from the top of it He presses a button and a newspaper article appears.

The anomaly will be resolved in time.”But the short to medium term is good enough for Bill Gates I called Microsoft to ask about its Network. “We won’t be charging VAT,” Jeremy Gittins, product manager, told me “We haven’t been required to.”. It is some time in the future. So until the loophole is closed, should businesses wanting to market Internet services to UK consumers do it from overseas? “In the short and medium term, yes,” Mr Thompson agreed “This won’t be sorted out quickly In the longer term, though, no. This opens up a loophole – to the detriment of potential UK service providers, and the UK economy, which is deprived of tax income.