If you were a component speaker last year, you were hot. While the total car speaker category rose 41 percent, component speakers shown even brighter.
Dollar shipments of components surged 56 percent last year for 2 key reasons:
A. New cars have been shipping with separate tweeter cut outs for about five years now and suddenly consumers are ready to fill those ready made holes with speakers offering separate tweeters.
B. Prices fell on component speakers so they can be found from top brands starting $129 or $149. Two years ago these speakers usually sold for over $200.
Pioneer’s Ted Cardenas said, “We as an industry have been anticipating that kind of natural adoption for component speakers…we’ve been expecting the aftermarket to have a little more success,” he said because “practically every new vehicle, even going back 5 or 6 years, even at a base level or the first step up, would include a tweeter.”
By units, component speaker shipments soared by 75 percent last year, again outpacing the total car speaker category, which rose 46 percent in unit shipments.
The Consumer Electronics Assoc. however, does not assume the trend will continue. It pegs growth at only 1 percent in dollars this year and sees component speakers falling in dollar shipments after that at a rate of 4 percent in 2012, 8 percent in 2013 and 9 percent in 2014.
Source: CEoutlook and CEA
