I present an exclusive guest-blog article by the 3DTV Team in Entreprenuerial Management Class from Boston University.
Autostereoscopic Industry
by
BU MBA 11’
3DTV Team in Entrepreneurial Management Class
3D Displays
The booming “3D frenzy” in the TV and the movie industry has garnered significant public attention in recent years. To take advantage of this opportunity, the major electronics manufacturers are now all pushing 3D TVs to the market. DisplaySearch forecasts that the total stereoscopic 3D display market will grow from 0.7 million units and $902 million in revenues in 2008 to 196 million units and $22 billion in revenues in 2018, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38% for revenues and 75% for units (See Exhibit 1).
However, the need to wear special glasses hinders adoption of stereoscopic 3D displays, as the units are only expected to reach a penetration of 3.6% in 2018. In a recent Nielsen survey, 57% of respondents indicated that the need to wear glasses would deter them from buying a 3D TV. Auto stereoscopic 3D (A3D) technology provides a glasses-free 3D experience and is considered the next generation of the 3D display market.
Auto stereoscopic 3D Technology
When a person views a 3-dimensional object, the person’s left and right eyes see the object from slightly different angles. The person’s brain receives the images from both eyes and is able to perceive depth and see the object in 3D. 3D displays simulate this process by providing slightly different images to the viewer’s left and right eyes. Prevailing stereoscopic technology uses glasses to filter different images to the left and right eyes. A3D technology, on the other hand, uses lenses or barriers within the screen to project different images to different eyes without the help of glasses. The two main methods for providing auto stereoscopic vision are the Parallax Barrier and Lenticular Lens (See Exhibit 2 for details on the different A3D display technologies).
A3D displays currently face a number of obstacles to broad consumer adoption. Viewers can only see the 3D images at a certain range of distances (depending on the screen size) and within a very narrow viewing angle (around 20~40 degrees). Another barrier is the high cost of making an auto stereoscopic screen; the cheapest 22” A3D monitor is priced above $3,000 and a 42” A3D monitor can cost as much as $8,600. (A 46” SONY stereoscopic 3DTV, on the other hand, retails for $1,999.) Most importantly, A3D and stereoscopic 3D content are not interchangeable (content produced for one kind of display cannot be viewed on the other), and there is currently no common platform for producing A3D content. For all of these reasons, the application of A3D monitors has been limited to business-to-business markets such as advertising and digital signage, gaming and entertainment machines, and scientific and medical visualizations.
The Auto Stereoscopic 3D Monitor Industry
The A3D monitor industry is very fragmented with five relatively large players controlling most of the market (See Exhibit 12 for a list of the major players.) Due to the lack of A3D content, manufacturers usually have to provide the entire solution to their customers; including content creation services, editing and playback software, and A3D display hardware (See Exhibit 13 for a typical A3D solution offer). As a result, each player has its own proprietary file format and software that are only compatible with their hardware. There is no universal standard for A3D content.
Sales of A3D displays are primarily project-based, as A3D manufacturers have to provide customized solutions and service for each customer. For example, Magnetic 3D has deployed a dozen 42” A3D monitors and customized 3D videos in the “Suites of the Future” campaign at Sun Life Stadium for Super Bowl XLIV. Currently, most major players focus on advertising and digital signage projects or special events like the Super Bowl case. For secondary markets (such as 3D engineering or medical visualization), manufacturers often choose to partner with 3rd party software company to provide A3D solutions for those applications.
Most display manufacturer sell through a direct sales force, as sales involve heavy customization and services which cannot be provided by value added resellers (VARs) and distributors. Some manufacturers do partner with 3D contents creating studios as their VARs. In these cases, technology and training support are very important for those VARs.
Source: http://www.displaysearch.com/cps/rde/xchg/displaysearch/hs.xsl/100104_3d_display_revenues_forecast_to_reach_22_billion_by_2018.asp
