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Taking a Pulse on the Current Projection
Market Segments
The education and corporate markets look promising for projectors. Corporate,
down somewhat in the past couple of years, posted stronger numbers in
the spring. In some cases, projects completed in the past few months
were ordered before last September, so perhaps there'll be a residual
downturn next year, but maybe not. On the other hand, many projects
were delayed in Q4'01, leading to perhaps a lot of activity in late
2002. The AV industry came out ahead of many others after the early
1990s recession, so perhaps it will remain strong.
Analysts at the Projection Industry Summit Conference (PISC) agreed
that the industry will grow, but opinions differ regarding how much,
and how it will be segmented among the various markets.
The command and control market continues to grow at least 25% annually,
despite major setbacks in the telecom and dot-com segments. Now there's
a lot of activity in the government and military sectors, with an emphasis
on security. Also, while before the focus was on defending against a
strategic threat, now there's a much greater sense of seriousness and
urgency.
These systems can cost as much as millions of dollars. So some companies
use them not only as information centers, but also as marketing tools
to impress existing and potential customers.
TFCInfo (Austin, TX) (www.tfcinfo.com)
says consumers will want space-saving projectors for their homes as
we move toward HDTV. They know they want another display device for
entertainment; they're just not sure which one yet. A major marketing
and educational campaign could make them choose a projector if the price
is right.
Decision Tree (Stevenage Herts, UK) (www.dtc-worldwide.com)
sees strong growth in the U.S. institutional/educational market, and
a big opportunity in smaller companies, following saturation in larger
companies.
Bill Cogshall of Pacific Media Associates (Mountain View, CA)
( www.pacificmediaassociates.com)
suggests more aggressive growth, amounting to 7M projectors sold worldwide
in 2006, with the U.S. accounting for 39%. He predicts 60K PDPs will
be sold in the U.S. this year, up from 40K in 2000, still a small market
compared to Europe and Asia.
Gary Kayye, Chief Visionary Officer at Kayye Consulting (Chapel
Hill, NC) (www.kayye.com), says this
year's growth in the AV corporate market will be only about 20%, rather
than the 30-40% of the past few years, but that's still strong growth.
Stanford Resources (San Jose, CA) says look for more suppliers
and $999 products, specifically models within the IT channel. However,
although many are exploring less expensive, long-life products for home
and education, no company has actually announced a projector for this
price yet. SR also says the biggest challenges and opportunities lie
in wireless and networking.
Stanford sees a worldwide market of over 6M plasmas worth over $16B
in 2007. Prices are expected to drop on popular sizes, and larger panels
will show up in more venues. Often plasmas are installed in areas that
already have projectors due to the sex appeal and "wow" factors
at play.
One thing most industry watchers agree on is the fact that if sales
predictions for projectors are to ring true, the consumer piece must
start gaining momentum sooner rather than later. - Stacy
Moran
Insight Media, Annmarie Gabisch, 203-831-8464, Annmarie@insightmedia.info
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