The IN2124 is XGA resolution and the IN2126 is WXGA resolution; both are 3200 lumens (2500 in EcoBright mode) and each weighs just 4.8 pounds. They are also 3D ready and wireless capable when connected to the optional InFocus LiteShow III adapter.

The new IN2120 series projectors come with all the expected connectivity needed for business and education applications and include preset modes to optimize images on beige walls, blackboards and whiteboards. They are currently shipping with an MSRP of $679 for the IN2124 and $759 for the IN2126.

Recent projector market research from Pacific Media Associates shows that while the US projector market is relatively flat and, despite budget challenges, teachers and school districts continue to place extremely high value on technology in the classroom. These value-priced units from InFocus should resonate with the education market and SMB’s on a tight budget.

Laser projection promises to usher in a new era in immersive cinema, especially for 3D movies, where the chief complaint of viewers has been that they are too dark. Barco demonstrated a 55,000 lumen laser projector and the 3D portion of the demo was impressive. Past concerns with speckle have been put to rest as well. Representatives from Barco, Christie, NEC and Sony are all in agreement that speckle is a “non-issue” at this point. Laser projection technology has come of age. From a production standpoint, lasers are still cost prohibitive. Lasers are expensive to manufacture and desired economies of scale have not yet been reached. Each manufacturer is working with their partners and components manufacturers to meet the production cost targets needed to make laser projection a commercially viable reality.

Other hurdles will take longer to resolve. Government regulation is the big one. Currently laser and projector manufacturers are operating under a set of 35 year old guidelines – written by the FDA for rock concerts and laser light shows. These guidelines don’t really apply to lasers being developed for digital cinema projection, since the laser illumination is inside the lamp-house. The outputs of three primary-color lasers are combined to create a normal white light source similar to that produced by Xenon lamps. In other words, the laser technology is internal to the projector, with conventional light exiting the lens. But, the wheels of government move slowly and a blanket FDA approval may take some time.

Exhibitors are excited by the fact that Laser lamps are expected to last up to ten times longer than Xenon lamps, run cooler and more efficiently, and remain steady in brightness. But, they are worried about the expense of upgrading to laser projectors.

Projector market research firm Pacific Media Associates has been following the digital cinema market since theaters first began “going digital” and will continue to follow trends in this, and other projector markets.

PMA’s projector market research closely monitors the pico projector component supply chain. Integrated chip sets, like this one from Intersil, enable manufacturers to design and manufacture embedded and companion pico projectors and are essential to the growth of the New Era projector market.

Intersil

Micron Technology

All three of DLP Cinema’s OEM licensees – Barco, Christie and NEC – have agreed to develop projector models utilizing the S2K chip design. Pre-production versions of the S2K chipset have already been delivered to each licensee for product research and development, with production-ready chipsets currently scheduled for delivery later this year. S2K-powered projectors can be expected to become available to exhibitors for ordering and installation soon after. And, with select VPF models expiring soon, the S2K chip will offer an affordable solution for small screens to resourcefully make the switch to digital cinema.

At the recent CinemaCon tradeshow, projector market research firm Pacific Media Associates learned that 68% of US theaters have already upgraded to digital projection. Smaller chains still needing to convert will be helped by this smaller, DCI-compliant chipset from TI.

PMA has been following the recent projector market trend of embedding pico projectors in iPhone accessories like this one from Micron and others from Brookstone, Trekstor, and iPowerUp.

Pop Video

Micron Technology

QuickLogic

The 1080p DLP model is 2500 lumens, has a 5,000:1 contrast ratio, and is backed by a 3 year warranty. It will support multiple resolutions (UXGA, WXGA, SXGA+, XGA, SVGA and VGA) and supports both PC and Mac video formats.

The HD23 will be available this month and will sell for $999.

Recent surveys conducted by projector market research firm Pacific Media Associates found that interest in home theater projector is on the rise, so Optoma’s Best Buy exclusive should garner a lot of interest.

To learn more, visit www.optoma.com

Not surprisingly, China accounts for a large fraction of the Asian region’s total, and because of its still-rapid rate of development it accounted for 43% of the Asia region in Q1, up from 37% in Q1 of 2011. The other two countries with double-digit percentage shares of the region were India and Indonesia, which very interestingly swapped places in the ranking during the year, with Indonesia growing dramatically­ fueled by large education tenders ­while India’s economy declined substantially and took the projector market down with it.

On a worldwide basis, projectors with 1000 lumens of brightness or more grew 6% compared with Q1 of 2011. Among the most notable trends in this brightness range was the growth in the share of short throw projectors (defined as those with a throw ratio of less than 1.1) from 12% one year ago to 15% in the first quarter of 2012. Most of this growth in short-throw projectors is due to their increasing popularity in the education market.

In the sub-1000 lumen brightness range, the worldwide total declined 10% in Q1 of 2012 compared with the year-earlier quarter. However, the portion of this range accounted for by mobile devices with embedded projection modules increased strongly while the standalone projectors decreased even more strongly, so that the ratio of the embedded to standalone ones increased from 1:2 in 2011’s first quarter to almost exactly 1:1 in Q1 of 2012.

About Pacific Media Associates

Pacific Media Associates specializes in worldwide front projector market information, including New Era (sub-1000 lumens), Mainstream (1000-3999 lumens), and High-End (4000+ lumens) categories. Their Industry Service family of publications provides detailed worldwide quarterly updates (sell-in data and forecasts) on front projector markets, blogs/alerts/newsletters on new products and other key industry developments, and biennial Web surveys of North American dealers and end users (including organizations and individual consumers). Their Tracking Service family of monthly reports offers timely sell-through data and analysis on unit sales, true volume-weighted street prices, and inventories of front projectors sold by leading North American retailers, resellers, and distributors. Pacific Media Associates was established by Dr. William Coggshall, who was a co-founder of Dataquest (now part of Gartner) and helped start the syndicated high-tech market information business. The company headquarters is at 1060 Siskiyou Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Telephone +1 650-561-9020 www.pacificmediaassociates.com

“Ever since flat panel displays became large enough to be used in business meeting rooms and home theaters there have been predictions of the demise of projectors from manufacturers–of both projectors and flat panels–as well as pundits, the press, etc.,” says Dr. William Coggshall, President of PMA. “Of course, ANY industry experiences a slowing of growth as it ages and increasingly saturates its potential market … whether or not it has strong competition from alternative technologies. The projector industry is over 20 years old, so the 6% growth rate measured by PMA’s comprehensive worldwide quarterly census is strong proof that the projector business is healthy. Of course, we all know some markets and applications that are moving to flat panels, and PMA is tracking these moves and taking them into account in our forecasts.”

To survive, any industry needs to innovate and change so, like a sports team, it needs a strong offense. Some recent examples of this offense are developments in short-throw projectors, interactive projectors, PC free presentations, and solid state illumination (laser, LED, and hybrid).

But a sports team also needs a strong defense. On June 12 Dr. Coggshall will make a presentation at the Projection Summit 2012 conference titled “Playing Defense in the 2012 Projector Business”, and is now previewing the reasons that some–or many–projector manufacturers might need to seek better defensive strategy and tactics than they now have.

1. Unlike most other industries, where prospective new entrants to an industry do their homework by looking at the size of the market and the number and strength of competitors before jumping in, but a lot of companies apparently neglected this step, leading to too many big fish in too small a pond. The natural response to this over-competition is to cut prices, so that many manufacturers are now making less-than-desired profits.

2. As in many high-tech product categories mostly manufactured in Asia, projector manufacturers have focused too heavily on market share as measured in UNITS. That was fine in the early days when annual growths were triple- and double-digit, but not today when growths are single-digit. Now they should be focusing on PROFITS, or at least REVENUES.

3.  Compared with the potential offered by projector technology, the projector industry has not been very creative in exploiting it fully. (a) The ranges of sizes (and portability) and prices generally exceeds those of flat panel displays (FPDs) but the projector market has lagged the FPD market substantially in units growth, though currently apparently not in profits. (b) Projector manufacturers–like FPD manufacturers-have focused on too few “sweet spots” that are now commoditized, with resultant over-competition and price-cutting. (c) New projector models are so similar to old ones that there is little reason for users to replace their old ones. (d) Overall the industry has been doing things the same old way for too long, and has been so risk-averse it has missed opportunities.

About Pacific Media Associates

Pacific Media specializes in worldwide front projector market information, including New Era (sub-1000 lumens), Mainstream (1000-3999 lumens), and High-End (4000+ lumens) categories. Their  ndustry Service family of publications provides detailed worldwide quarterly updates (sell-in data and forecasts) on front projector markets, blogs/alerts/newsletters on new products and other key industry developments, and biennial Web surveys of North American dealers and end users (including organizations and individual consumers). Their Tracking Service family of monthly reports offers timely sell-through data and analysis on unit sales, true volume-weighted street prices, and inventories of front projectors sold by leading North American retailers, resellers, and distributors. Pacific Media Associates was established by Dr. William Coggshall, who was a co-founder of Dataquest (now part of Gartner) and helped start the syndicated high-tech market information business. The company headquarters is at 1060 Siskiyou Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Telephone +1 650-561-9020 www.pacificmediaassociates.com

An Odeon spokesperson said that the NEC projectors have offered them the ability to give customers the best cinema experience possible. The goal is to complete installations in time for the Euro 2012 Football Championships and the Summer Olympic Games so they can stream live content to theaters from the events.

Once installations are complete, NEC and Odeon will consider expanding the partnership to include NEC digital signage for theater foyers and NEC products and services for network operations centers.

Recent forecasts by projector market research firm Pacific Media Associates estimate worldwide cumulative shipments of Digital Cinema projectors to top 90K by the end of 2012 – due primarily to theater conversions in Europe and China.

We are not sure if the number of projectors in use, and the number of hours they are powered on but not being used, result in as much damage to the environment as some other phenomena that are not under Energy Star, but we generally laud their activities on behalf of the environment. Projector manufacturers who are already strapped by the over-competitiveness of the business may not welcome the extra costs of complying, but at least they can benefit from the publicity of their announcements.

A few months ago, Pacific Media Associates published results from our sixth biennial large-scale (1000 responses) and statistically representative survey of United States users and intenders of front projectors, both individual consumers and organizations. The survey focused on many topics of timely interest, including “greenness”. Of the individual consumer respondents, nearly 60% said an environmentally-friendly projector is an absolute must or very important for their next projector. Among organizational users, this figure was nearly 70%. The “greenness” factor is, and will continue to be, a hot topic in the electronics industry.