The growth of flat panel displays over the past decade has been a remarkable story and has enabled the proliferation of flat screens into a number of product categories. Flat panel displays are used primarily in televisions, computer monitors, notebook screens and mobile handsets. What is remarkable is the utter dominance of backlit active-matrix LCD technology in each of these categories.

The combination of constantly decreasing costs and increasing performance in active-matrix LCDs has made it difficult for other technologies, such as CRTs, plasma displays, field emission displays, and organic and passive LCDs, to compete with it in major markets. Active-matrix LCDs either are encroaching in markets previously dominated by these technologies or are preventing new technologies from gaining a foothold. This supremacy is fueled by nearly continuous cost reduction in the fabrication of amorphous silicon backplanes and by improvements in the color, viewing angle and response speed of active-matrix LCDs...

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