Pacific Media Associates (PMA) just released its latest research report on the worldwide projector market. The worldwide projector market totaled 2.3 million units in calendar Q2.

The second quarter is typically a seasonally slow one for sales of home entertainment projectors. That was not the case this year as Euro Football and the lead-up to the Olympics led to a buoyant quarter for 1080p projector sales throughout Europe. In the mainstream professional market, robust growth slowed in China but education tenders drove 20 percent+ year/year gains in the ASEAN countries.

High-end projector sales also registered solid gains during the quarter. The U.S. market, the leading country in the world for high-end projectors, hit a record-setting high in volume for the quarter. While already-high digitization rates are impacting the U.S. digital cinema market, high-end growth this quarter turned to traditional conference room and large venue projectors as this segment jumped 20 percent vs. the year-earlier quarter.

In the sub-1000 lumen brightness range, the worldwide total fell again compared with the year-earlier quarter. That decline was mainly due to lower shipments of modules embedded in mobile devices, though that trend is expected to reverse course sharply in the second half of 2012. Standalone projectors, including pico projectors and personal projectors, managed to eke out a small gain over the year-earlier quarter. This segment too is expected to pick up strongly in the second half of this year.