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The Middle East projector and AV market continues to experience rapid unit growth. It is now the case that the many vendors that patrol this territory are measuring the efforts and aptitude of their current channel alliances to make tough decisions about the type of partner that best suits the market’s evolution.

The projector business has had a buoyant time of things in the Middle East over the last few years with rising shipments and solid end-user attention in both the consumer and commercial sectors.

Vendors in this product area previously saw their equipment sitting in a niche frequented by home theatre enthusiasts and corporate buyers tasked to kit out a conference room. No longer though are projectors quietly humming in the background of the Middle East IT and consumer electronics markets.

According to the vendors that supply projectors, the shining box is now a more mainstream purchase.

With this proliferation also comes an undercurrent of channel evolution. Many projector manufacturers that ship to the Middle East are busy looking at the type of partners they work with and asking themselves whether they need to enlist the services of a new type of partner to answer the direction of the domain.

"With the projector business, as it has moved from being a niche to a little bit more mainstream, we have to look carefully at channels to market," said Adam Dent, MEA territory manager at Optoma.

Optoma - which does not yet have a regional office, but is planning to hire a sales representative - says it traditionally works with audio visual (AV) specialist partners in the region, but is now considering a more general IT partner as the market evolves.

"When you look at it, they [AV partners], have done a good job for us, they have got us up to 6.5% market share for the third quarter so we cannot complain. But they have been driven quite hard to do that and we have had to get some of them to do things they normally wouldn't accept because they like to work on higher margins," explained Dent.

Moving into the mass market though requires an acceptance by the partner of slimmer margins, says Dent, and it is for this reason that he is considering, at the distribution level, working with a broadline partner, naming Aptec as a possible option.

NEC, which recently restructured its business to include a display solutions arm encompassing projectors, panel TVs and PC monitors, has also re-evaluated its channel ecosystem to step into the mass market.

"We have broadened our channel base for projectors to include some channels that we have not traditionally targeted like IT dealers and retail," explained Ian Gobey, general manager at NEC display solutions Middle East. "Previously, our business was more focused on AV channels where our technical and quality advantages are best represented as part of a solution sale."

But to say that the market is expanding, and thus the channel previously serving it no longer relevant, is short-sighted and too simplistic an evaluation. The projector market has become a great deal more complex over the past few years.

There needs to be a clear segmentation of the market because just as the consumer sector has migrated towards the mainstream, the high-end projector segment has experienced a resurgence as commercial clients have demanded a higher level of integration from their conference facilities.

This means vendors serious about projector profits in the Middle East are ensuring they have a clear demarcation in their channel - a view shared by members of the channel as well. Director at Graphic International, Sanat Kulkarni, explains that as a distributor the firm aims  to cover both facets of the market.

"We focus on the mass market as well as the high-end AV integration market. There has to be a clear demarcation as it is a different market altogether. As far as the mass market is concerned the best reseller is an electronics store and for the high-end a good quality AV integrator is what you should be looking at," said Kulkarni. "The margins are obviously better in the high-end business."

Expanding those margins is a key element for the distributor and Graphic explains that it does this for itself, and for the reseller channel, by adding as many complementary non-IT based products as possible, ranging from ceiling mounts to remote controls and microphone equipment.

There are those that claim margin expansion in the projector business is something the channel in the Middle East has yet to fully explore. Of course there is a great deal that a systems integrator can do around installation and fitting to ensure margins are healthy. Partners can even play the teacher role.

"I know it is not something that the Middle East resellers are used to, but potentially there is an opportunity around how to make better presentations and better use of their AV technology," said Dent. "I would that say with some imagination there's all sorts of revenue streams to move people away from, ‘here's a box, plug it in and get on with it'."

It is certain that the projector channel needs to be segmented, as the two poles of the market have been highlighted, and it is unlikely, no matter how much vendors claim they would love to see a retail partner expanding it's value reach, that power retailers will be immersing themselves so much in the value-chain. But there is, however, a blurring of the channel player's role at the top end of the market.

Systems integrators that are working with the aforementioned broadline distributors are working hard to develop their value offering, taking advice handed down by vendors seriously and looking at turnkey solutions around projector technology.

In this way, these systems integrators are moving into the ground that is traditionally occupied by AV specialist partners. One such systems integrator is Abu Dhabi-based Alpha Data. The firm counts enterprise computing and networking, as well as audio and visual integration, among its business divisions.

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