SYSTEMS INTEGRATION ASIA
FEATURE
The Future of Projectors
Barco projectors bring SpongeBob to life at Adelaide Oval, Australia
Futuresource reports that the global front projection market (excluding Screenless TVs) declined 31% year-on-year in CY2020 – the worst annual performance since CY2006. The significant volume decrease is largely retained to H1 2020, where the industry was hit not only by the direct impact from lock-down measures and the closure of schools and corporate offices across the globe, but also because of changed end-user perceptions of display technologies. While CY2021 is expected to grow year-on-year, the global projection market is forecast to face long-term steady volume decline moving forward. It is fair to say that collaboration and VC tools have been playing a significant role to support remote working and learning during these times. However, Futuresource research found that moving forward, as the demand for collaboration solutions is forecast to rise in the post-COVID-19 world, this will negatively impact the global projector market, as these tools are integrated largely into FPD. Victoria Tselykh of Futuresource adds, “Undoubtedly CY2020 has been very challenging for the global front projection market. Not only pre-existing
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challenges such as high penetration rates and mounting adoption of competing displays technologies across key verticals, but also the global pandemic created a wide range of uncertainties around trading, economic conditions, supply chains and most importantly end user demand.” In the face of the gloomy outlook, there is however still much optimism for projector manufacturers. “Despite the overall market outlook being heavily influenced by COVID-19 and general pessimism around a full market recovery, there are certainly areas of opportunities and volume growth once the pandemic is over and the effective vaccine is widely available. These opportunities are driven by the higher brightness categories with demand deriving from several application such as Higher Education, rental, staging, museums, and macro-mapping,” said Victoria. SI Asia spoke to Barco, BenQ, Christie and Epson, who are heavy-hitters in the projection front to get their thoughts about challenges, opportunities and the future of projectors. JULY 2021
