Rachna Gupta

New Delhi
26th February 2008

Projectors prices are witnessing a drop. There is nothing new in that as every electronic gadget or any consumer commodity undergoes this phase.

But in the backdrop of the recent prince hike of other products as reported on DQ Channels Solutions Alert recently, the projector business is bucking the trend. And surprisingly, though the price of the projectors has gone down it does not indicate that the business has slowed down as well. In fact, feature-packed projectors have become the basic necessity in every business organization.

All major players like Epson, Sony, NEC, BenQ, Sanyo, Panasonic, Canon, etc are bringing the prices of their projectors down. Said Jaswinder Singh Mann, Business Head-Display Products, Panasonic Asia Pacific, “Since more players are entering this space, there is a stiff competition due to which the price drop is obvious. This is also because the demand for LCD projectors and home theatre systems is really growing.”

Sharing a similar view is Abhimanyu Gupta, Director, Actis Technologies. “With respect to the market size, too many brands are available in the market. Additionally, innovations in technology keep happening every other day,” he said.

Seeing the tremendous growth in this business, Vinod Jain of Chennai-based Computer Planet has started dealing in LCD projectors this year. “We have also been roped in with market leading brands like Hitachi, Toshiba and Viewsonic for the same. CRT monitors' segment has almost reached its saturation point, and so we have shifted our focus more on the TFT monitors, which is still in the growth phase,” he informed.

The market view Demand of projectors has increased by 25 percent as compared to last year. Almost every vendor decreased its prices in the said segment by approx 15 to 18 percent, except few who are maintaining prices with marginal decrease in prices to maintain quality products.

In terms of volume, the projector market is growing at 20-25 percent annually, although the prices have been falling by 15 percent. The Asia Pacific market for projectors continues to see robust growth, especially as systems continue to become more affordable. As projectors have entered the mainstream, prices on every technology, from plasma and LCD monitors to front and rear projectors have come down. This has seen an increase in the sales volumes of the projectors.

VP Sajeevan, Assistant Director, Canon predicted that vast exposure and product awareness will prove to be driving factors in projector segment within India. “In 2007, Canon India registered approx 70 percent growth in the projector business, which was higher than the market growth. We bagged the world's biggest order for 350 high-end projectors. Though it's too early to comment on anything specific on this year's trend, the early indications are very encouraging,” he informed. With government focusing on e-governance projects and expectation of a further increase in education sector, investment will surely fuel further growth.

“The projectors do have a very bright future and we foresee a situation that every home would have a projector and use it as a mini theatre. I feel that the projectors would contribute almost 20-30 percent to our company's revenue by the end of this year,” Jain said.

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