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[TheJackal]

One of the guys at work heard this....

I got this from someone who got this from someone who got this from someone ... etc ... Might be interesting for anyone planning on buying TFT soon.


(cut out and keep)


TFT Supply

As you are aware 15" TFT supply is a real problem area. The shortages are so bad that prices are rising steeply. Do not be surprised if you start to see vendors de-committing on fixed price agreements. Some vendors have already sold their supply for the whole of the next 3-4
months. We are not expecting this to change for the rest of this year (i.e. 2003) and we expect the first quarter of 2004 to be very difficult as well. The reasons for these storages are several fold, but basically demand for the TFT glass is outstripping supply. For this to change we need new manufacturing facilities to open. As you can imagine this takes time and each fabrication plant cost about $5
Billion.

This is the same for all the vendors, whether we are looking at the monitor manufacturers or the PC vendors. If any of them tell you anything different we would like to know as it is unlikely to be true and might be used as a way of suppliers trying to find a way in to your current accounts and prospects.

Please remember this is impacting everyone. Even DELL have increased their web pricing on a 15" TFT to within £20 of a 17" TFT. This is not a reduction in the price of 17" screens it is a significant price increase on the price of the 15".

What should I do?
Try and get your customers / end users to move to alternative formats of monitor. 17" CRT's are in very good supply and 19" CRT's are in reasonable supply.

17" TFT's are another good alternative, but please be aware that many customers have now moved to this form factor hence supply is drying up at a very rapid rate.

Laptops
The TFT shortage is starting to impact laptop supply, again all vendors are suffering. Further shortages of hard drives and DVD's across the industry are also impacting the supply. Again prices are on the up.

Our advice should be to try and order any laptop requirements as early as possible.

:-?

[lempkee]

heh, this sounds just like the Simm problem in 95.

lets see what happens, but still i doubt people will buy 15khz lcd monitors unless they really need it, so i hope price on them wont go up.

costs about 400 quid for them atm. (17inch)

cheers