Barco

Working on the BD700 is a very conservative approach. It is the safe bet that Barco could take. This will help them meet the expectations of their engineers and customers. But the risk is that they stand to lose out big time if all speculations about Sony 1270 are true. Not only will Barco lose 30% of the market share of BG400 and a significant share of BD600, its BD700 will look obsolete in comparison to the Sony 1270. The Sony 1270 could still undercut the BD700 in prices and be a much better projector. That will cause the morale of the customers and engineers to go down anyway. Although it might be important to finish this project, but given that Sony has come out with a potential product that could change the market, it is in the best interest of the company to put this on hold and compete aggressively to keep its market share high.

The BG700 would give Barco a competing product to the Sony 1270 in two to three months. But the product would still be inferior to the 1270 in terms of light output, picture quality and resolution, which are the main criteria for customers. The BG700 would also be priced higher, at least $2000-3000 more than the BG400. The customers would not be willing to pay such a heavy premium for a clearly inferior product. The only plus point of this product would be that Barco would still be able to finish the production of the BD700 by December, and not dissatisfy the customers completely. But then again, both the BD700 and BG700 would be inferior to the Sony 1270. If Sony decided to price the 1270 at $15000, these products will eventually be failures, with Sony easily giving more value for money.

Barco needs to play a high risk high rewards game now. The speculations about the Sony 1270 pricing may not be true. But even so, Barco will get a head start on displaying a better product at Infocomm. The price premium on the BG800 would be justified given its clear superiority, and the Barco brand positioning will not be compromised. The...