One of the overall impressions of the SID this year was that there were few OLEDs on view. As I mention in the main report, published in Display Monitor, I think this is because Samsung is clearly in the lead in developments in this market, but is concerned about giving away too much information to competitors. LG has responded to this by also hiding its OLEDs. That's a shame and might give reporters that are not as close to the market as specialists, such as Display Monitor, the idea that OLED is not important or 'not winning'. It is very important, because OLED is important, or even critical, to the Korean makers.

Samsung and LG are completely dominant in terms of market share in LCD and in all of the FPD market. However, as David Barnes said in his excellent talk at the business conference, there is strong evidence that sheer scale doesn't help you to control a market in LCDs as it does in some other industries, such as semiconductors. I think there are some good reasons for that which may be the result of the industry structure and history, but I'll need another editorial to discuss that!

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One of the key trends that we saw from panel makers LG Display and AU Optronics at the CES show is the release of more 21:9 aspect ratio panels and three new TVs using that aspect ratio from US hot TV seller Vizio.

I berate the panel business often enough for not innovating from the end user's point of view (although that is usually in the monitor field), so I should be keen on this, shouldn't I? However, I just don't get it. I have three major objections (so far).

The first is that the justification for this shape is that '21:9 is the aspect ratio for movies, so there are no black bars any more'. So let's look at this. 

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