Menlo Park, California, USA – November 14, 2012. Pacific Media Associates (PMA), the worldwide projector market information experts, just released their latest projector research. The worldwide projector market totaled 2.47 million units in calendar Q3, with growth improving vs. the previous quarter in New Era (including pico projectors and personal projectors), Mainstream, and High-End industry segments.

In the Mainstream segment (1000-3999 lumens), virtually all of the major markets around the world registered growth vs. the second quarter except Western Europe. The mature countries in Western Europe fell back in the third quarter due to overstocking of value models for major sporting events. Offsetting this typical downturn were large government projects in Russia, revitalized channel business in Turkey, and tender projects in other Middle Eastern countries.  In the United States, third-quarter sales rose against the previous quarter but are still trending lower year/year due mainly to funding constraints in education. Seasonal gains were also registered in China and Japan, and government projects lifted Latin American projector sales to a record-high quarter.  On a worldwide basis, a noticeable uptick in sales of higher-priced home theater models reflected rosier expectations for the holiday season.

In the High-End segment (4000+ lumens), high digitization rates continued to impact d-cinema sales while manufacturers signed new deployment agreements and launched entry-level models to tap emerging markets and smaller cinemas. The rest of the High-End market continued to register healthy year/year gains, largely driven by the Olympics in the United Kingdom as well as continued strength in China.

In the combined Mainstream and High-End segments, PMA’s technology shares showed 3LCD narrowly eclipsing DLP. When factoring in the New Era segment (sub-1000 lumens), DLP maintained their share lead for the entire projector industry. New Era sales hit their highest levels of the year thanks mainly to the ramp-up of brighter pico projectors and personal projectors as well as healthy growth of modules embedded in mobile devices (DSCs, camcorders, cell phones).

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 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