Business Mainstream, Home Entertainment, 4000+ Lumen Projectors – Best Sellers Dec. 2017 – Jan. 2018

We are pleased to be able to share with you, recent business, education, and home projector sales tracking information, for North America.  Below are the rankings of the top five best selling projectors, in three categories, the info is provided by PMA.

Pacific Media Associates (PMA) publishes what is typically a bi-monthly list of the best selling projectors in the Home Entertainment, Mainstream (Business) and 4,000-plus lumen categories (US sales only).

You will see below that Epson dominates the Mainstream Category for both months.  Optoma has several entries in the Home Entertainment category for both months as well.  The 4000+ Lumen Category is more varied, including Sony, Panasonic and Hitachi projector models.

BenQ scores one projector in the Home Entertainment Category.

They’ve been doing this since the 1990s, and the releases continue to provide our industry with valuable information.  They sell detailed information of their tracking to the manufacturers, which find the data useful.  We get a top five, paying manufacturers get virtually a unit by unit breakdown of most projectors sales numbers.  When my old company was a major internet projector reseller, we, like most others, reported our data to PMA.

We combine their data to produce our summaries and comments for your information.

We've provided some links at the bottom of each list.  Those are either a review of the same projector as seen on the list, or a sibling - typically one with almost identical feature sets, except perhaps different resolution, or different brightness.  Any links will relate closely to describing the projectors making the PMA lists shown here.  -art

For those looking for the Home Theater category, that will probably come out in two months, this time, we only have the lower end - around $1000 or less Home Entertainment projectors, They do those more serious home theater projectors separately.

A few observations about the results:

First, there's usually some shifting around from month to month, in most categories. In some categories it's more than others.  Home Entertainment usually has about 6-8 projectors that dominate the top 5.  Notice in December and January, it was the same five, just in different order.  New models often cause a change.  Sometimes an all new projector becomes a hot seller, but other times it's just "replacement time."

For example both the Optoma HD142X and the BenQ 2050 have just been replaced.  I expect the new models to show up soon, but let's say both the BenQ 2050, and the replacement 2050a (I'm reviewing late April), might not make the list for a couple of months as some dealers will be out of the old ones, while others are still selling them. Splitting the potential market share between the two, definitely could cause neither of them to make the top 5, even if both together easily could.

Best Selling Home Entertainment Projectors 12/17

Epson Home Cinema 2150 Review

Epson Home Cinema 2150 Video Review

Now let’s look at January’s best sellers.

When you look at 4000 lumen and over projectors, there's a lot more variation from month to month. That said, it looks like Sony's first affordable laser projector (the least expensive laser around), has carved out a top position.  In November Hitachi put two on the top five, but dropped out in December as Epson and Panasonic both added a second projector to the top 5.  One of the reasons theres a lot of shifting, is in this area, there are often large buys, such as by a university or corporation, so that in any given month, a projector that isn't normally a top seller, can jump onto the list.  Of course, the most popular ones tend to visit more often.

One thing of significance to point out.  While lamp based laser projectors start out close to $1000, in November, 2 of the five 4000 lumen plus projectors were laser projectors.  In December that increased to three out of five!

I believe that's fair proof, that at least in the 4000 and up lumen range, the laser's day has come.  At the moment, though we don't have any laser projectors close in price to typical low cost business and education projectors that sell under $1000.  I should note that Casio, definitely a "player" does offer a lower cost solution for solid state - an LED/Laser combination that they've been selling for probably 6-7 years now, with good success even if they didn't make either top 5 list.

A last thought to pass along:  Many of you may be wondering why Epson has so many units making the lists.  Between both months, Out of 15 slots each month, Epson racked up 7 in December, and 8 in January.  Folks that's half.  So, how do they do it? Well they have more projectors in more market categories than anyone else, and over the years, they've managed to, per industry trackers, exceed 50% of projector sales in North America (that's not counting small pico projectors).  They have the advantage of being the major LCD panel manufacturer.  Sony makes some but only for a few markets.  That lets Epson, almost single handedly do battle against more than a dozen well known DLP brands.  Perhaps it's the 3LCD vs DLP that's really the reason.  Epson's market share is impressive considering how many manufacturers there are, with Optoma having the 2nd highest market share at an otherwise respectable 7%!