Pacific Media Associates (PMA) released its latest research findings on the worldwide projector market. The worldwide projector market totaled 2.3 million units in calendar Q1, with the Asia region’s accounting for 39 percent, up from 35 percent in the year-earlier quarter, according to PMA’s latest report.

Not surprisingly, China accounts for a large fraction of the Asian region’s total, and because of its still-rapid rate of development it accounted for 43 percent of the Asia region in Q1, up from 37 percent in Q1 of 2011. The other two countries with double-digit percentage shares of the region were India and Indonesia, which very interestingly swapped places in the ranking during the year, with Indonesia growing dramatically­fueled by large education tenders­while India’s economy declined substantially and took the projector market down with it.

On a worldwide basis, projectors with 1000 lumens of brightness or more grew 6 percent compared with Q1 of 2011. Among the most notable trends in this brightness range was the growth in the share of short-throw projectors (defined as those with a throw ratio of less than 1.1) from 12 percent one year ago to 15 percent in the first quarter of 2012. Most of this growth in short-throw projectors is due to their increasing popularity in the education market.

In the sub-1000 lumen brightness range, the worldwide total declined 10 percent in Q1 of 2012 compared with the year-earlier quarter. However, the portion of this range accounted for by mobile devices with embedded projection modules increased strongly while the standalone projectors decreased even more strongly, so that the ratio of the embedded to standalone ones increased from 1:2 in 2011’s first quarter to almost exactly 1:1 in Q1 of 2012.