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Monitors that Are TVs and TVs that Are Monitors: Here We Go Again…

Posted by Calvin Hsieh in Desktop Monitors, TVs on July 28, 2009  |  3 comments

By Calvin Hsieh – Research Director, Chris Connery – Vice President, PC and Large Format Commercial Displays, Deborah Yang – Research Director, Monitor & TV, DisplaySearch, and Hisakazu Torii – Vice President, TV Market Research

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it should be called a duck. But how do you classify a platypus?

While the concept of convergence between PCs and TVs has been around almost as long as the PC market, as LCD TVs come down in price (mainly by getting smaller in size) and as the traditional desktop PC market continues to evolve, the definition of the display continues to evolve as well.A case in point is that Q1’09 saw the re-emergence of multi-function monitors (or MFMs), which are defined as products principally designed as computer monitors but which also include a TV tuner. These products come from the monitor business units of major corporations or from monitor companies as opposed to TV companies. Many companies are struggling internally over how to classify such products: Are they TVs, monitors or are they truly being used as both a PC monitor and a TV-the least likely of the scenarios? The market for MFMs should not be confused with watching TV on a PC, which is a related but separate trend. Indeed, watching streaming video such as Netflix on one’s PC might be considered the true definition of convergence, especially if this individual watches a TV show or movie, then switches to tweeting or emailing on the same machine. MFMs do not require that the PC be turned on. It is often pointed out that TVs are easier to use than PCs: you never need to CTRL-ALT-DEL your TV! Apple has even conceded that such usage, and its opposite-watching streaming video over a TV using Apple TV-is still in the hobby phase.

To move from the hobby phase to the mainstream, monitor manufacturers are once again building TV tuners into their monitors, thus allowing the display to be turned on (via an included remote control) without turning on the PC and hassling with all the software required for watching TV on a PC.

Such dual function displays have been marketed before, with the market all but dead with the ATSC tuner mandate for smaller displays, since including an ATSC tuner priced these out of the market. For instance, Dell tried to get into the TV market by marketing MFM-TVs (monitors with TV functionality) many years ago. Other companies such as Sony and Sharp had similar strategies and products. But these products were sold in the PC section of retailers like Best Buy, which helped to position them as monitors in consumers’ minds. Actually, companies like Samsung would have almost the same product in the TV section (originating from the company’s TV division, not its monitor division) as well as an MFM from the monitor division in the PC section. The MFM was typically much less expensive than the same-spec TV, but customers never went to the PC section to buy a TV and thus the concept failed.

Flash-forward to 2009, however, and the game has changed, especially in Europe. It appears that many retailers no longer have a PC section and a TV section (with new types of retailers now coming into play in the CE market) and are mixing the products together both on the bricks-and-mortar side and in etail. So since MFMs are sold alongside LCD TVs (most of which have some sort of PC connector like VGA), are they still considered monitors?

When customs officials come upon such a conundrum (that of not being able to define a product simply by its specification), they tend to fall back on principal use-how the product is primarily used or intended to be used-and tend to rely on many factors:

  • How the company classifies the product (i.e., self classification)
  • Market channels (retail outlets vs. commercial/industrial distributors)
  • Actual end-use (difficult to know without direct surveys of end-purchasers)

Since the actual use of a product is difficult to determine, no one can tell at the moment if the new crop of MFM products being promoted in Europe are really being used as TVs (they look like TVs, have a remote and can be used on a stand-alone basis away from a PC and are, in many cases, less expensive than similarly specified LCD TVs), as monitors (with the TV function maybe used occasionally), or simply as computer monitors.

Until such end-usage patterns can be established, DisplaySearch captures data based upon how companies internally classify a product, as opposed to simply by feature-sets, since specifications alone cannot tell the whole story. How else should these products be classified? Should it be assumed that all displays that have a tuner are TVs even if history has shown that if such products are not promoted as a TV and are from a monitor company, they are most likely used as a computer monitor? Opinions welcome…

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  • http://www.hdtvprofessor.comHDTVAlmanac Alfred Poor

    Chris et al, this is a great piece! My only contention is that watching video on the Web is rapidly progressing past the “hobby” stage, no matter what Apple seems to think. The rapid growth of watching content on Hulu shows that we’re past the geek stage and “average” consumers are beginning to catch on.

    I feel your pain about the taxonomy problem, and agree that manufacturer self-classification is probably the only workable plan for the present. I would add screen size to the equation, however; a computer monitor is an individual’s device, where a TV can be used by individuals but often connotes being able to be viewed by more than one at a time. I’d also add resolution as a factor; anything over 1920 by 1080 is a computer monitor at this point because there’s no TV signal available above that resolution.

    Alfred

  • http://www.abrisdc.com Rustam

    From sales point of view MFM is bestseller comparing to TV, surely small sized ones (19″, 20″)
    I have a great experience that 20″ MFM – 200 units were sold during 2 weeks from a small shops, though TV only few.
    I think this is a good competition between real TV and MFM. But I dono why vendors produce MFM cause it is a real competitor of TV. Low income user don’t really need high end features of TV he wants to watch TV programs only andlow cost MFM fulfill these needs fully.

    Rustam

  • http://www.meko.co.uk Paul Butler

    A little extra information on the European angle is related to duties. In the past the 14% duty on TV’s was a barrier and unless you were a large brand such as Samsung or Sony, assembling MFM’s in Europe was expensive and complicated. Most smaller brands didn’t want to invest in new factories but neither could they provide their products to the market without the 14% up lift in price. In the recent past, with the drops in panel prices the cost barrier for importing has become a lot cheaper (14% of $100 is a lot cheaper than 14% of $250) but the cost of local assembly has remained almost static. If you assemble in Europe, as panel prices have come down (or back up) you need to continuously evaluate the import vs assembly cost ratio. Recently there has been a lot more direct imports at the small 19″ – 26″ size MFM’s than before however, the Korean brands did ‘steal a march’ and are now producing a lot of these locally for the European market with some substancial sales numbers from the monitor business unit. Interestingly none of the top Japanese TV brands have a desktop monitor business unit in Europe any longer. A hole in the market for a Japanese brand to fill perhaps?
    Paul