Casio is leaving the projector market, what difference does that make?

In the second quarter of 2020, a rather significant event took place in the projector market. It is not related to the problem common for all industrial sectors consisting in the total drop in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it can make significant adjustments to the business structure of the global projector market and its local segments.

Based on the current market conditions, Casio's management decided to close the projector business.

In the announcement of the ITResearch report on the Russian projector market for April, the experts of the analytical company note the departure from the market of this rather large and well-known player on the world projector market as a very important event.

In the Russian projector market, Casio is also a fairly prominent player, especially in some niche sub-segments. Therefore, the market configuration may change.

In order to understand how Casio's departure could affect the volume and structure of the Russian projector market, the editors of the IT Market Bestsellers asked questions to the leading players in this segment.

1. Do you think that Casio's departure will have a noticeable impact on the Russian projector market, and in which sub-segments it will be most noticeable?
2. Which of the other players in the Russian projector market has the greatest chances to replace Casio in our market?
3. What changes in connection with the departure of this vendor are possible in the dealer and distribution channel in our market?
4. What products can current Casio partners use to replace the falling product line relatively painlessly?

The editors are grateful to the experts who presented their vision of this problem. Unfortunately, representatives of many companies were not ready to comment on this issue publicly (although we still believe that there are not sufficient grounds for this), but actively shared their vision at the expert level. We will try our best to take their opinion into account when preparing our resulting article, and we would like to express our special gratitude to Tatiana Skokova, Director of the Wide-Profile Distribution Division of MERLION, who did not object to the publication of her opinion.

Tatiana Skokova:

“Casio was represented on the Russian projection equipment market with a stable share of less than 3%, so its departure will not have a noticeable quantitative impact on the market and other players.

Considering product specifics, namely a laser-led light source in combination with a DLP matrix and unique weight and size characteristics of some models and street-price above average, Casio projectors were in demand in government and educational supplies. Also, a significant share of sales was made up of a pool of companies that supplied their products on a turnkey basis for offices in complex, including calculators of this brand.

In the medium and long term, while maintaining the current trends, the segment of local and global brands will shift from the category of projectors to the category of interactive panels. In the next 2-3 years, we will see a shift from the B-brands dominating this segment to the A-brands of the LFD segment and monitors such as Samsung, LG and Iiyama. It is also likely that a full-fledged Russian manufacturer of interactive whiteboards will appear, specializing not only on one customer but also on working with medium and small partners."

Representative of one of the leading players in the Russian projector market (on condition of anonymity)

1. Yes, it will influence the educational segment.
2. Epson, Panasonic, NEC, Chinese no-names. The latter have more chances since the price has been killed by Casio.
3. This is a personal problem for Polymedia. It was their exclusive feature. And this is the danger of any exclusivity.
4. The replacement will be painful since all decent brands are significantly more expensive.

Thank you all! The editors in cooperation with the analytical company ITResearch will try to prepare their expert vision of the problem in the near future.