Given that the LCD monitor market is still expanding, the high demand issuing from the market is a crucial source of revenue for IC design houses despite the intense price competition that has crimped profit margins. To ensure a steady stream of revenue, controller IC suppliers will need to fortify their position in the market, and future competition in the controller market can be expected to become even more intense. 

Although Taiwanese suppliers were late entrants to the LCD controller market, Taiwanese players had already accumulated formidable IC design capabilities, and their R&D personnel costs are relatively low. These advantages have made the Taiwanese design houses very competitive on price. The 60% of global LCD monitor supply that Taiwanese monitor makers supply is another advantage, giving Taiwanese suppliers a firm foundation on which to develop their businesses. 

As regards collaboration with customers, cost is not the only concern for LCD monitor makers. Controller IC quality affects the performance of the whole monitor. At the same time, the trend towards higher levels of IC integration has created a situation where many different functions are now integrated on the same IC; IC design houses are now providing customers with total solutions. When an LCD monitor maker switches to a new component supplier there is a higher risk of quality problems, rendering attractive prices insufficient in soliciting new business from monitor manufacturers; customers must have confidence in the compatibility and quality of their offerings for there to be any chance of maintaining a long-term collaborative relationship. It is for this reason that international players such as Genesis have been able to maintain a leading role in the industry. Currently, Taiwanese IC design houses such as Mstar have strong capabilities in the areas of mixed signal technology and structural design, as well as price advantages, but have also succeeded in building a reputation for quality, which should help them to secure more customers in the future. 

As Taiwanese suppliers have gradually come to prominence in the LCD monitor controller market, companies such as Genesis have been forced to move up into more high-end segments to maintain profit margins. Such suppliers are now focusing on high-resolution monitors and LCD TV controllers. In the short term, therefore, international suppliers such as Pixelworks and Genesis will remain the leading players in the LCD TV controller IC market. 

While Taiwanese design houses are also developing LCD TV controller ICs, the technology needed for TVs is of a higher order; time to market will vary depending on technological capabilities. In the short term at least, most Taiwanese firms will continue to concentrate mainly on LCD controller ICs so as to maintain their main source of revenue.

Appendix

Research Scope

This report covers controller ICs for adoption in LCD monitors worldwide. Controller IC for other applications such as LCD TV do not fall within the scope of statistics presented herein. 

Definitions

LCD Monitor Controller IC

LCD controller IC refers LCD monitor control board scaling engines, which may integrate ADC, PLL, TMDS (Transition Minimized Differential Signaling) Receiver, MCU, OSD and T-CON (Timing Controller). LCD monitor controller ICs are used mainly for processing static images. Controller ICs receive signals from a PC or other audiovisual device and process the signal for conversion to a signal recognizable by the TFT LCD panel. 

Input Interface

The input-end signal for an LCD monitor can be either an analog or digital, and as different ICs are needed to process various signals, control boards contain numerous ICs. In the past, CDT monitors were only able to receive analog signals, which required the PC's VGA (Video Graphics Array) card to convert the digital signal to analog before transmission to the CDT monitor. At present, as TFT LCD panel can only recognize digital signals, the analog signal produced by the VGA card must be converted back into a digital signal by the ADC. Implementing this repeated signal conversion allows LCD monitors to directly replace CDT monitors. Digital input signals are received directly by the TMDS receiver. 

Formerly, the ADC, DVI, MCU and scaler ICs were all independent IC units that IC design houses sold separately to LCD monitor makers. Currently, in order to reduce costs, design houses have started to integrate many different components onto the same IC. Genesis, for example, was the first company to integrate ADC, OSD, and PLL into the scaler. As digital interfaces have become more prevalent, the DVI has become more important, spurring integration of DVI. If both the ADC and DVI functions are integrated into the scaler, this is known as a dual interface. There are thus now three types of LCD monitor input interface: analog, digital, and dual interface. At present, because CDT monitors are still the mainstream, the analog interface is still dominates. 

Output Interface

LVDS

LVDS is a type of signal processing technology that reduces the number of wires between the LCD panel and the controller IC, and which can also reduce voltage and keep EMI to a minimum. Main applications include notebook PCs and 17-inch and larger TFT-LCD monitors. 

RSDS

RSDS is a signal standard transmission interface located between the timing controller and source driver. RSDS reduces bus width and pin count, lowers electricity consumption, reduces EMI, lessens interference, and boosts transmission volume. 

TTL

The signals produced by the scaler are TTL signals. Typically, these need to be converted into LVDS by the LVDS transmitter. As 15-inch LCD monitors encounter fewer EMI issues, most monitors of this size still use TTL output.