Gil,

The PIC nicely fills a niche underneath the 8051. They offer smaller packages and are quite inexpensive. For relatively simple operations like a display panel driver, they can be good controllers.

When you're going to be making a product for a production line, its better business to design it with the best microcontroller for the application rather than attempting to put a familiar microcontroller into every application.

Granted in embedded systems, we often do specialty designs for low volume wherein the intelligence of the controller is more important. By all means in those cases use what you prefer because you don't have to worry about lost profits over volume.

aka j