No More CRTs From Hitachi

Well, we've all seen it coming and it's getting clearer that soon our CRTs will be the flotsam that gets put out on the sidewalk with a "Free" sign, like those old 286 and 8088 machines we cleared out of the garage years ago. Hitachi just announced that it will soon stop making CRTs for PC monitors, concentrating instead on building LCD displays. By the end of 2001, Hitachi will halt production of monitor CRTs at its manufacturing bases in Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia, and is reviewing options for selling the business. Hitachi says the sluggishness of the desktop PC market has reduced demand for CRTs, leading to a sharp fall in prices. Add the expected shift in demand to LCDs, and the company now sees no prospects for growth in manufacturing CRTs. The fact that we'll all soon be gazing at LCDs is probably true, but with an admission like that, who do they figure will buy the CRT business? Hitachi intends to concentrate its resources on flat-panel displays such as TFT LCDs (including low-temperature poly-silicon TFT LCDs) for everything from mobile phones to large-screen models for multimedia apps. In the future, you'll have significantly more desk space.