Company continues to out-sell all other competitors combined
CALGARY, Alberta --- May 5, 2009 --- SMART Technologies announces it had a 50.2 percent product category share in Q1 2009, over 3 percentage points higher than the previous quarter. SMART sold more interactive whiteboards than all other manufacturers combined. The company’s sales are strong in all major geographies around the world. In the United States, SMART had a 60.1 percent product category share, up more than 3 percentage points compared to Q4 2008. Across the Americas (includes all North and South American countries), SMART enjoyed a 61.8 percent product category share. In Asia-Pacific, SMART’s share was 32.1 percent, a 12.5 point jump from the previous quarter. SMART also gained 9.1 percentage points in the United Kingdom, which brought SMART to a 62.3 percent share there. And in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, SMART continued to lead the interactive whiteboard market with a 39 percent product category share. The data comes from Futuresource Consulting, a leading global research company that has tracked interactive whiteboard sales for over eight years.
SMART’s position as the product category leader in the United States is particularly noteworthy as the U.S. is currently the largest adopter of interactive whiteboards in the world. Futuresource predicts that almost 275,000 interactive whiteboards will be sold in 2009, making it the biggest year ever forecast for the country. The total number of interactive whiteboard sales in the United States in Q1 was just over 56,000, a nearly 10 percentage point increase from Q4 2008. Of these, SMART sold nearly 34,000. SMART has installed 1.2 million SMART Board™ interactive whiteboards in 175 countries, and more than 20 million students worldwide benefit from the technology every day.
“The results from the first quarter of 2009 once again affirm SMART’s position as the clear leader in the interactive whiteboard product category,” says Nancy Knowlton, SMART’s CEO. “These results reflect our continuous drive to develop more intuitive, innovative products that improve the lives of our customers.”
