Pacific Media Associates (PMA) is predicting that the front projector market is starting a major transition, and some major companies will likely leave the market.
PMA president William Coggshall, said the projector business is gridlocked, and most manufacturers must change their approach or die a slow death.
“The ‘Old Era’ of nearly identical products, distribution channels, and targeted customers – with competition based mainly on price – will have to give way to a ‘New Era’ marked by less-conventional thinking and a willingness to take some risks. Doing this in an orderly fashion will be a challenge in the very near future,” Coggshall said.
“To achieve the transition from the Old Era to the New Era will require thinking that is more creative, less conventional, or even a bit contrarian. Successful companies will be those who understand that waiting until an opportunity is clear means that others will get there first and make all the money. They will have to focus on being approximately correct rather than precisely wrong, a far cry from the current ‘paralysis by analysis’. There are no new answers in the same old data,” he added.
Unlike gadgets such as laptop computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, and iPods, Old Era front projectors have failed to reach the critical mass required to become must-have products for individual consumers. But in the New Era, companies with vision will take advantage of further miniaturization, lower costs, and new technologies to enable projection capability to be built into all sorts of consumer electronic gadgets by the end of this decade.
Many TV manufacturers initially embraced projection technology as the most likely replacement to the venerable CRT, but today’s reality is that large LCD and plasma panels dominate. And while some companies made substantial investments in projection technology, few actually developed critical components or proprietary technology. Without a strategic reason to continue, other companies are likely to exit the projector business. But as the Old Era segues into the New Era, some unlikely non-TV companies are likely to seize at least some of the emerging opportunities, such as pocket projectors, instant theater, and video boomboxes.
PMA specializes in global display market information, covering all large-screen display categories: front projectors, plasma and LCD TVs, and rear-projection displays.
