Here's some speaker sales statistics that surprised me, when Matthew Polk gave them to me on a recent trip to Baltimore:
Total speaker sales in 2005: $358 million, up from $294 million in 2004.
Sales of conventional floorstanding speakers: $74 million!!!!
By far the largest-selling category was ceiling speakers, at $115 million, with in-wall speakers at $62 million, outdoor speakers at $53 million, and shelf speakers at $55 million.
I wasn't sure if "shelf speakers" meant stand-mounted small speakers and minimonitors, or something different, but even if does, the 2005 market for "architectural" speakers was considerably larger, at $230 million than that for the kind of high-performance speakers reviewed by magazines like Stereophile.
Food for thought.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Here's some speaker sales statistics that surprised me, when Matthew Polk gave them to me on a recent trip to Baltimore:
Total speaker sales in 2005: $358 million, up from $294 million in 2004.
Sales of conventional floorstanding speakers: $74 million!!!!
By far the largest-selling category was ceiling speakers, at $115 million, with in-wall speakers at $62 million, outdoor speakers at $53 million, and shelf speakers at $55 million.
I wasn't sure if "shelf speakers" meant stand-mounted small speakers and minimonitors, or something different, but even if does, the 2005 market for "architectural" speakers was considerably larger, at $230 million than that for the kind of high-performance speakers reviewed by magazines like Stereophile.
Food for thought.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile