DigiTimes recently has a chance to talk to Koichi Kubota, general manager of VI Marketing Department, Imaging Products Operations Division from Seiko Epson, to talk about the company's outlook for the projector market in 2006 and 2007, along with Epson's worldwide business strategy, developments and the competition of projectors against flat-panel TVs.
Q: Can you talk about your forecast for the global projector market in 2006 and 2007? What is Epson's shipments goal for the period?
A: According to Epson's internal estimates, the global front projector market will reach 4.5 million units in 2006, up 20% from 2005, with the business-use segment accounting for nearly 80% of the market. Despite rising shipments, revenues are expected to stay flat this year due to fast falling ASP (average selling price).
Looking ahead, Epson predicts front projector shipments will continue growing in 2007 and will see a 20% on year growth, with home projectors enjoying a 30% sequential improvement. However, revenues for projectors will only increase slightly due to continuous ASP reduction.
For Epson,the company aims to grab 18% of the worldwide market in 2006 and will push its home projector business in 2007, aiming at a 20% sales growth.
Q: As business projector grows stably, how does Epson stimulate demand for the market?
A: User-friendly will be the major focus for Epson's business projectors. Some products we have launched are static electricity-and dust-proof. These features help decrease the repair rate. In addition, wireless application is another focus of our products.
Currently, 3LCD technology account for nearly 60% of overall front projector market and also enjoys several technology advantages over rival DLP (digital light processing). For example, rainbow effect is a potential problem for DLP technology and 3LCD have a better color gamut than DLP.
Epson will strengthen its promotion of 3LCD technology in the market to improve customers recognition.
Furthermore, pricing will be another driver for demand. We expects prices for XGA projectors to see a more significant price reduction in 2007, compared to SVGA segments.
Q: How will Epson respond to the fast-falling pricing in the projector market?
A: Epson is now aggressively working on ways to further reduce production costs such as further reducing the size of LCD chips and improve functionality such as brightness and filter rate.
Q: Compared to other IT or customer electronics products whose demand are often more than ten million units, front projectors cannot expand its market significantly. What's your opinion on that?
A: The main reason that the annual demand for projectors stay about 4-5 million units is related to customers' shopping habit.
Projector vendors need to adjust their product images. After all, the projector is ideal for large-size screen market. However, projectors sold in malls now still fail to deliver a viewing experience of large-size screen to the customers.
Epson, therefore, is planning on ways to present projectors to customers differently for more acceptance.
In addition, I don't think projector will be a direct competitor for flat-panel TVs. They will both exist in the display market.
Once the market share of projectors rise to 20%, demand for the segment will soon take off.
Koichi Kubota, general manager of VI Marketing Department, Imaging Products Operations Division in Epson.
Photo: Max Wang, DigiTimes
Article translated by Emily Chuang and edited by Carrie Yu
