Table of Contents
- Summary
- The Rise and Fall of the Plasma Empire
- Advantages of Plasma Technology
- Plasma’s Weaknesses
- A Bad Reputation
- LCD Advantages
- The Retail Problem
- Too Far Behind
- Plasma Market: A Look Forward
- Key Takeaways
- About Alfred Poor
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
In 1998, Philips launched a series of television ads that started to reshape the world’s expectations of what a television set could be. The “Let’s Make Things Better” campaign included spots that showed new, flat screen televisions in enticing settings: on the ceiling of a fancy apartment, in the garage of a home as a drive-in movie theater for two, and in an improbably-small apartment with room for a couch and not much else. Forty-two-inch sets had list prices of about $9,000 back then, at a time when the average picture tube color TV bought by a U.S. consumer cost only $292 according to CEA. True, the plasma sets cost 30 times as much, but they sparked the imagination of TV viewers worldwide.