"This is a new mainstream price line!" In the face of the sales growth of projection products at a price of 1500 yuan or more since the second half of 2021, industry insiders pointed out that a new popular product price line is becoming a new kinetic energy that leverages the "layout structure" of the entire projection consumer market!
DLP down, LCD up
What kind of product supply point is the price of 1500 yuan? From the perspective of market products, this is the current price low point that DLP home smart projection can achieve; it is also the "price high point" that single-chip LCD projection can achieve!
On the one hand, starting in 2021, the new generation of DLP technology intelligent projection products of 0.23, 0.16 and 0.3 light valves began to appear more. This allows DLP projection technology to "look down" at new boundaries on the price line. Based on the lighter optical machine system, a number of products represented by mobile applications and low prices have filled the previous market gap. For example, micro fruit I6, Changhong S series, etc., these products are mainly aimed at 300-500 lumens, the price is in the range of 1500-2000 yuan market layout. It is currently one of the important pillar product lines of DLP projection in the four- and five-line sinking market and pocket projection market.
On the other hand, traditional monolithic LCD projectors with the main features at low prices are chasing a better experience. Among them, the main changes are the application of intelligent, autofocus technology and the increase in standard brightness to more than 250-500 lumens. These changes have led to a "significant increase in the cost" of monolithic LCD projections, which are already close to the price point of DLP projectors. At present, some high-end single-chip LCD projection discounts can be quoted up to 1700-2000 yuan before discount, and the price after discount is between 1200-1600 yuan.
The sinking market of DLP products and the rise of the market for monolithic LCD products have led to the formation of "intertwined" and positive competition at the price of 1500 yuan for the two major technical lines of products that were previously "clearly distinguished". As a result, it has led to new changes in the market share structure of home intelligent projection products.
Boost the momentum of consumption increment and sink the market to change competition
For the supply of the home investment market at a price of 1500 yuan, industry experts pointed out that this is largely due to the "expansion of the scale of the industry" and "the sinking of market demand".
In 2021, domestic intelligent projection (including laser TV) sales exceeded 5 million units. The huge stock demand allows manufacturers to develop and design more targeted and more segmented product lines. Among them, the single-chip LCD model has formed 500 yuan, 1000 yuan and 1500 yuan; 30w, 65w and 100w+ three clear price and power gear lines, for different needs of users to carry out differentiated layout. This is the same reason as the DLP projection model to form a number of DMD light valve product lines such as 0.16/0.23/0.3/0.33/0.47.
If the market is large enough, you can make the product line thinner. The bigger main force driving the market scale is the development of the third- and fourth-tier, and even the fourth- and fifth-tier markets - that is, under the high saturation of the traditional first- and second-tier markets, the growth of the home investment market has been fully transferred to the "sinking" market. The spending power of "small-town youth" is obviously different from that of white-collar workers in big cities. This constitutes a new industry development trend.
For example, in 2021, the sales volume of high-brightness and high-quality models in the home investment market (including laser TVs, etc.) will exceed one million, creating history at the same time, but the market share of low-priced products such as monolithic LCD models has also increased in reverse. Especially in January 2022, the market share of domestic smart projection (excluding laser TV) DLP products fell to 42%, a new low in recent years. At the same time, the market share of the top three brands or the top ten brands in the market has also declined significantly.
Of course, the sinking market does not mean "quality sinking": on the contrary, the average sales price of monolithic LCD products will rise sharply in 2021, especially the sales of models above 1,000 yuan have increased significantly. This, together with the increase in sales of DLP models at more than 4,000 price points, has driven an increase in industry sales. For example, in January 2022, the online sales volume of the smart projection market (excluding laser TVs) was 412,000 units, an increase of 16% year-on-year; sales were 860 million yuan, an increase of 24% year-on-year - in the context of the increase in the share of monolithic LCD models, the industry's sales growth rate is still significantly higher than the sales growth.
This shows that even the sinking market is facing the problem of "improving the quality requirements of the demand side". ——This is also the basis for the DLP projection scale to explore the market below 2,000 yuan. That is, the use of DLP products more compact and higher optical efficiency features to seize the "low-end market quality demand upgrade trend".
The price center of low-end intelligent projection consumption is moving from below 1,000 yuan to more than 1,000 yuan! Industry experts pointed out that this may be one of the key variables to change the brand pattern of the smart projection industry. It is also another important development trend in the home investment market in recent years, in addition to "LED highlighting, laser projection micro-investment, laser TV popularization".
Thousand dollars in the market nuggets, change is beginning
In 2021, Xiaoming, a monolithic LCD projection brand, successfully entered the top ten in the monolithic LCD projection brand by focusing on higher brightness, more accurate parameter standards, and more exquisite product modeling design. In January 2022, Bob's sales ranking in monolithic LCD projection has risen to sixth place, becoming a dark horse in the industry!
However, there is such a dark horse phenomenon, but also shows that the brand loyalty of the monolithic LCD projection market is relatively general: industry experts pointed out that for consumers of monolithic LCD projection, the importance of the brand is not high, because on the whole, this is a "knowing that the purchase is a low-end product" consumption behavior, that is, a low-expectation consumption behavior. The latter also leads to the "network evaluation" of monolithic LCD projection products can not accurately reflect the effect experience of the product - because the expectation is low, it is easy to meet, that is, the evaluation of the same score or star rating has a gold content, which is very different from the mid-to-high-end products.
Low brand loyalty is where the opportunity lies! "For the brand loyalty of the monolithic LCD projection model that occupies the majority of market sales, the industry's view also has a positive side: First, the brand loyalty of the monolithic LCD is not high, and it is precisely the opportunity for the sinking products of the DLP model - consumers have not formed a fixed consumption model, and there is a higher demand for the experience effect of the monolithic LCD product, which resonates with the research and development direction of the DLP projection small light valve and the low-cost model.
The second is that some LCD monolithic projection model brands that are committed to long-term expansion of the home investment market are looking for a "new way". For example, a significant market change in 2020-2021 is that the number of virtual models that claim to have thousands of streams of brightness has decreased significantly – brands have begun to value their own reputation and reputation, product parameter transparency has increased, and the concept of self-created "flickering" has decreased. At the same time, some brands have begun to go out of the pure OEM/ODM product OEM model, using some independent technologies to improve product taste in intelligent systems, optical systems, and modeling design.
That is, on the whole, the industry believes that when the single-chip LCD model enters the era of thousand-dollar price, there has been a fundamental change in the law of consumption: if the model of hundreds of yuan is more of a "toy"; the model of more than a thousand yuan, the seriousness and attention of consumers have increased significantly - the thousand-dollar single-chip LCD projection has officially become a "household object". This will be a new market space that can try to build "brand loyalty" and "quality consumption concept", and will also be an important milestone to drive the transformation of the consumption pattern of low-end projectors.
In summary, around the consumption trend of small town youth home investment products of 1500 yuan, the smart projection market is staging a "competitive pattern" of monolithic LCD upward and DLP projection downward. How to fight this "entry market" battle may not be related to the "profit and return" of mainstream brands in the industry, but it is an important window for the "rural encirclement of cities" strategy of emerging entrepreneurs in the industry. It remains to be seen whether new industry leaders will emerge from this new mainstream consumer line.