For a while now I’ve been blathering on to anyone who’ll listen (and plenty who’d rather not – Ed) about falling TFT prices, while marvelling at the bargains that can currently be had. Large-format TFTs have gone from expensive luxuries to affordable commodities in a remarkably short period of time, so I wasn’t surprised to read today that the head of LG Display, Kwon Young-soo Kwon, believes the industry has “hit the bottom.”

I’ve just finished writing a TFTs Labs for next month’s issue so I know first-hand just how crazy the market has become. We had one 22in TFT for £80 plus VAT, a 24in model for £140 plus VAT and even a monstrous 28in for a little over £200 plus VAT. If I remember correctly, some of these prices are cheaper than 17in and 19in TFTs reviewed just months previously.

It can’t be healthy for a whole industry to plummet so quickly in order to chase declining sales, and the remarks from Kwon at LG back this up. He sees displays for mobile devices as the next major revenue stream to come to the rescue, but the problem for the desktop TFT is where it can go from here. In the past the cheap, smaller TFTs have held the majority of the market share, but there has always been the lure of the larger models – the 22in and 24in ‘giants’ that came at a hefty premium – to keep margins up and to excite us about the future.

In today’s market those very TFTs have become the mainstream, but there’s no longer the same higher segment to look forward to. Would a 30in TFT fit on most home desks? I know my reason for not wanting one is not that it’s too dear, it’s that it simply isn’t practical in my home, and I’m sure many would agree. Even a 28in TFT swamps the average work desk, and I’d argue buying two smaller – and cheaper – screens is infinitely more practical for daily use.

Maybe branching out into other niche markets could bring some relief. Nvidia has decided 2009 will be the year of the 3D monitor (as a preview on our newest sister site BitTech.net demonstrates), which is certainly an area of premium prices right now; Samsung and ViewSonic are on board already, others will inevitably follow.

Touchscreen technology has also been slowly growing, and will certainly come into focus more now Windows 7 is out in the wild. And then there’s the bright light in the distance that is OLED, a technology with astonishing potential but precious little chance of hitting consumer desktops in any helpful timeframe.

Which leaves the industry in a muddle: the large money-spinners have turned into the cheap mainstream fodder, and there are fewer and fewer premium products to take their place. Prestige brands like Sony opted out long ago, and you can count on one hand those remaining, such as Samsung, with the quality to continue to keep both their prices and their sales figures high.

In one sense it’s great news for consumers, as a generic but perfectly usable 22in TFT for £80 should mean everyone can afford to extend their desktop. But the worry is that if we all get too used to cheap and cheerful TFT prices, it’s not too hard to imagine the likes of Samsung, LG et al packing their boxes and joining Sony on the outside looking in – and with that quality gone we’d all be worse off.