An AV Boom Shaping Up In China?

Jul 28, 2005 8:00 AM

It’s the world’s most populous nation and biggest marketplace, and increasingly the nation that most quickly arouses suspicion and fear among American companies looking toward a more competitive future in a borderless economy.

China is on many minds these days, including those of strategists in the professional AV quarter.

Not long ago, China’s appeal to western firms was chiefly as an inexpensive place to manufacture, or as a source of cheap components for complex systems made in Europe or the United States. Many U.S. firms located fabrication plants in China or bought system elements from Chinese makers.

Today, though, the same firms are putting sales offices in China. They’re looking to satisfy a growing domestic demand for large-screen video displays, event staging support, videoconferencing, and other resources. A homegrown Chinese pro AV channel is beginning to emerge.

A recent report by Wainhouse Research, for example, looked at the market for videoconferencing and distance learning in China, noting, “With close to 1,396 institutions of higher education, and as an early adopter of advanced IP network technologies, China is a natural breeding ground for distance education.”

But there’s more going on in China than university-based teaching. “Governmental and corporate training needs—engines of commerce—are fueling adoption of various types of online training and videoconferencing-based training,” the report adds. “Practitioners consist not simply of educational institutions, but also of trainers in government and corporate environments. ...Thus, not only educators outside China should be interested in exchanges with China, but also non-governmental organizations (NGOs), other governments, and corporations, which all have a stake in delivering educational content/training into China.”

Insight Media has also reported on a recent renaissance in joint venture agreements between Chinese partners and European and American firms. “The most significant news was the announcement that TPV Technology in Hong Kong, a subsidiary of BOE in Beijing, plans to purchase both the monitor and flat-screen television businesses from Philips,” Insight Media says. The company has recently published an overview of the frenetic JV activity in the Chinese AV industry.

Non-Chinese manufacturers continue to make headway in the market. Barco Media & Entertainment, for instance, recently announced it has won a contract to install state-of-the-art indoor and outdoor LED display solutions at the Nanjing Olympic Center, its largest order to date in the Chinese sports market. TVOne, Shure, and other companies have recently launched sales and service operations in China. Hong Kong-based Lighthouse Technologies announced it had provided more than 30 of its high-resolution video screens for the recent AutoShanghai auto show.

Trade shows and smaller business meetings, a mainstay of the U.S. AV industry, are growing by leaps and bounds in China, as well. AV Tech Audiovisual Rental, Ltd., has a distinctly American-style hotel AV business thriving in Beijing. The company offers projectors, plasmas, audio systems, translation, and other services in two-dozen leading hotels. Similarly, AV Promotions with offices in four cities in China, boasts “specialized teams of professionals that cater for new product launches, promotional events, video programming, and various multimedia productions.”

American staging, rental, and permanent install integrators aren’t quite ready to jump in, though. A quick canvass of several of the largest AV firms in the United States revealed none had any active projects or hot prospects in China.