NEC Corp believes the time has come when people will welcome the idea of replacing their cathode ray tubes with liquid crystal displays, and in January will bring to market a 20.1 thin-film-transistor high-definition color display with 1.3m pixels, a wide viewing angle and quality comparable to cathode-ray tube monitors. It will be aimed at workstations used for desktop publishing and computer-aided design. It is just a tenth the depth of a standard monitor and uses one-third the power, but it will cost something approaching $4,700, which puts it out of the reach of most users and explains why NEC is only looking to sell 5,000 of the things a month. It will invest $465m in a plant to make large liquid crystal displays in volume, starting in 1999.
