Monitors
Recent Market Developments Impacting on Monitors
As purchasers it is always vital to keep a close eye on developments in the market as they undoubtedly influence our buying decisions.
Sometimes it is worth paying a premium to buy a "bottleneck" item. Sometimes it makes good purchasing sense to delay a purchase, if market conditions indicate that the item is likely to fall in price.
Availability of goods often affects the price - it is a simple case of supply and demand. So when an event occurs which is likely to impact on availability it is well worth considering bringing forward purchasing decisions, if at all possible.
The public sector now faces just such a situation in relation to the likely availability of monitors in the near future.
LCD monitor manufacturer Lite-On Technology has suffered a major fire at its OEM production facility in Dongguan, Southern China. Industry sources state that the fire has disrupted manufacture on 15 (79%) of their production lines.
Given that the company makes monitors for Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Acer and Lenevo, it is very likely that there will be a shortage of monitors in the near future; it is worth noting that the company supplies over half a million monitors to Dell each month and around 400,000 monitors to HP, so the impact should not be underestimated.
As a responsible purchaser, considering bringing forward any upcoming purchasing decisions for monitors makes sense in these circumstances.
At this stage the impact is likely to affect availability rather than price though, as monitors are used in conjunction with other devices. Their shortage may manifest itself as a "bottleneck" item, whose absence impacts on the use of connecting devices.
If your organisation does have a requirement for monitors, current developments in this area will also be of interest to you.
In order to make their products more attractive, manufacturers are always looking to improve or innovate. With regard to well established products (such as monitors) it may be that they seek to add features to increase their attractiveness to potential purchasers.
It is always worth considering however, just how useful these additional features are. If you are not going to use them there is no point in having them - fitness for purpose is, of course, one of the key criteria in assessing items for purchase.
A recent development with monitors has seen the introduction of High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) inputs or support for High Definition Content Protocol (HDCP) images.
Perhaps more useful for desktop users is the introduction of monitors with integrated web cameras and speakers. These items will aid the use of video-conferencing facilities which in turn, may cut travel between offices and consequently impact favorably on carbon footprints.
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