The world air conditioner market is estimated to reach 65 million units in 2006 (in 2000 the world total was 41 million units), which means it's continuing to expand steadily, reports "JARN" magazine.
One of the main reasons for this expansion is the rapid growth of the Chinese market and the heat waves in Europe, which doubled the AC demand. The USA and Japanese AC markets have remained stable.
The Chinese market reached 20 million units in 2004, becoming the world's largest market. In 2006, it is estimated to remain level with or drop a little below the 2004 or 2005 level. This is due to confusion caused by the unusually rapid growth, the worsening situation of electric power supply, and the government policy for reinforcing the control of the real estate boom.
Until 2000, the US was the world's largest AC market, a position now taken over by China. For the last years, the volume of the US AC market has continued to be larger than 13 million units reflecting the brisk domestic economy, the booming real estate business and intense heat waves in the summer.

As for the Japanese home-use RACs (room air conditioners) market, it remains mature. Their shipments in 2006 are estimated to total 7.4 to 7.5 million units and those in 2007 are predicted to remain at about 7.4 million units. Japan's demand for PACs (packaged air conditioners) mainly for commercial use again started to show signs of an upturn from the latter half of 2003, and this trend became evident in 2004. In 2005, PAC shipments were recorded at 800,000 units due to increased corporate investment in facilities/equipment reflecting the economic recovery.

The European AC market has grown rapidly for the last 5 years, becoming the focus of Asian manufacturers. The size of AC markets in the seven major European countries (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK) expanded rapidly from some 2.4 million units in 2000 to 5 million units in 2004. This owes much to the record-breaking heat in 2003. Although the European market size decreased slightly in 2005, it is expected to increase again in 2006.
A breakdown of the European market shows that Italy and Spain form the largest market at about 1.4 to 1.7 million units (after 2004), followed by France, Greece and the UK at 300,000 to 500,000 units each. Russia has now been added to the major markets of Europe growing rapidly from February 2003, now reaching 600,000 to 700,000 units per year.

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