Since CES in January 2010, the display world has a new marketing darling - 3D. There has not been one day since without an announcement on the release of the latest 3D movie, TV, Blu-Ray player, connector, etc. While the industry as a whole has been infected by the 3D virus, last year’s mega trend - ‘Green’ electronics - is following the path of the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’ - still there, but somewhat less prominent.

Norbert Hildebrand
Insight Media Analyst

This doesn’t mean that the new devices are less environmentally friendly than last year’s models. Quite the opposite is the case. The green aspect just doesn’t make the headlines any more. Here is a small summary of related news collected over the last few days.

- The CEC ‘Amendment of the Appliance Efficiency Regulation’ has been passed to the Office of Administrative Law after being adopted by the CEC. While this has been quite some time in the making, the final document is on its way through the Californian bureaucracy, and will affect TV sets sold in the state after January 2011. As we have reported on this topic several times before, the main message is that the CEC didn’t back down and changed nothing, despite the objections of some CE manufacturers and the CEA.

- ENERGY STAR’s newest edition of the TV 4.0 standard is going into effect on May 1, 2010, with TV 5.0 taking effect in 2012. TV 5.0 calls for TVs that are roughly 65% more efficient than TV 3.0. Unlike the CEC initiative, with its law requiring TVs to meet certain energy levels, ENERYSTAR is an optional standard providing excellent marketing opportunities for the TVs that meet this challenge. It will be interesting to see what effect the new standard will have on the overall product offerings coming this year. We certainly expect that all major brands will have their line-ups shifted to models that fulfill the newer standard requirements.

- VIEWSONIC announced several eco-friendly TVs based on LED backlight technology. Based on product sales, LED backlight technology made Samsung the winner of an otherwise poor 2009 TV season, and VIEWSONIC aims at getting their share of the pie by introducing these eco-friendly TVs ranging in size from 19" up to 42". With stated energy savings of 30% - 50% over standard CCFL-lit TVs, this is indeed a step toward significant energy savings. Insight Media will report on this in more detail in our upcoming LDR issue (take a peek at the scope of coverage at http://www.insightmedia.info/monthlyreports.php)

- Earth911.com is a website that has focused on recycling issues since 1991. They operate a phone hotline and a website (http://earth911.com) dedicated to consumer information and education regarding recycling issues on all kinds of products. They even offer an iPhone app called iRecycle listing over 110,000 recycling and disposal locations for over 240 materials. This app also gives the hours of operation of these locations and provides directions from your current location to the nearest location, as well as local recycling events in your neighborhood. You can get this app on the iTunes store for free. (See some screenshots in photo.) In the group’s latest yearly report, they noted a 12% increase in searches for recycling products by consumers. The top 3 products researched by consumers are computers, batteries and televisions. This shows an increased consumer interest in the recycling of electronic products. The most research came from California, Texas and New York. These responses seem to indicate a rather even per capita response rate and not just a local trend in specific green communities.

So in summary, we still see a fair amount of green activity in the display industry with energy efficiency improvement and recycling concerns topping the consumers’ minds when it comes to environmentally friendly CE products. I believe that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, driven mainly by government activities (whether incentivized or mandatory). New technologies that can’t comply with these eco-trends will have an even tougher road to economic success (if this is even possible at all). Future product ideas will need business plans that address these concerns from the get-go, making ‘greenness’ another product feature similar to resolution and brightness.

Reply to the author