INDIANAPOLIS -Factory-level sales of audio and video equipment through custom-installation channels will grow 26.5 percent this year to $2.1 billion and will grow 28.1 percent in 2001 to $2.7 billion, according to a Frost & Sullivan research report.
The statistics were based primarily on actual sales data provided by 104 manufacturers. The report, commissioned by the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA), is the first of the association’s planned annual reports on the custom industry’s sales volume. It also marks the association’s first effort in five years to quantify the industry’s size.
The report breaks out audio and video sales separately, and within each category, it quantifies such segments as in-wall speakers, projection TV and direct-view TV.
The study found that video sales accounted for 85 percent of the custom industry’s A/V volume in 1999 and will account for 87.5 percent in 2001.
As a percentage of the total U.S. video market, the custom channel accounted for about 8.1 percent of sales in 1999, based on a comparison of CEDIA’s numbers with the Consumer Electronics Association’s $17.3 billion estimate of total 1999 video sales (custom and noncustom combined).
As a percent of the U.S. home audio market, custom accounted for 6.3 percent of CEA-estimated 1999 sales of $3.95 billion, which includes mass-market audio products such as shelf and rack systems, home-theater-in-a-box systems and home radios. Custom’s portion of component-audio sales, however, is a heftier 16.3 percent, based on CEA’s 1999 estimate of $1.53 billion in component-audio sales.
Last year’s custom A/V sales were closer in size to 1999’s CEA-estimated mobile-electronics aftermarket sales of $2.44 billion.
In the custom channel, in-wall speaker sales are forecast by CEDIA to grow 20 percent to $41.4 million in 2000 before rising another 30 percent in 2001 to $53.8 million.
Direct-view TV sales are expected to grow 10 percent in 2000 to $239.8 million before rising another 8 percent in 2001 to $259 million. And projection-TV sales are forecast to rise 1 percent to $87.2 million in 2001 and 18 percent in 2001 to $102.9 million.
