Corporate AV to boom as demand for meeting rooms multiply, says Futuresource

Sales of flat panels into the corporate market will rise by 25 per cent and 17 per cent in Europe and the USA respectively, by the end of 2018. But projector sales will slow. That’s according to Futuresource Consulting. New research shows that 24 per cent of companies are expected to add additional meeting space over the next five years, leading to the boom, and creating significant opportunities for integrators and suppliers working in the corporate AV space. 

“Our figures point to a total addressable market of more than 10.5 million meeting rooms right now across Western Europe and North America, and that figure just keeps on rising,” says Chris McIntyre-Brown, Associate Director at Futuresource Consulting. “But the landscape is changing, we’re seeing the rise of the huddle space and opportunities are opening up in the SME segment. These are exciting times for the corporate AV market and switched-on vendors could seize a significant slice of the action.”

LCD panels are also expected to take share from the projector market. By the end of 2018, European respondents expect their ownership of projectors to have declined by 9.6 per cent, whereas they expect to increase their flat panel display ownership by 25 per cent. Over the same period in the USA, respondents expect their projector ownership to decline by 8.4 per cent and flat panel to rise by 17.1 per cent. Of all the European markets, the UK showed the lowest reliance on projection, although over 55 per cent of large meeting spaces and 45 per cent of mid-size meeting rooms still have a projector installed.

“The corporate meeting space is no longer all about the display,” says McIntyre-Brown. “Convergence of AV and IT and the upsurge of collaborative communications solutions, wireless presentation, video conferencing and audio is creating a combat zone of new challenges and opportunities for all vendors operating in this space.

“A growing number of providers are offering affordable, scalable and highly converged solutions to address the varied requirements of both enterprise and SME customers, though with research becoming increasingly difficult, they are grappling with changing demands in device choice and feature set requirements.”

It’s also predicted that web conferencing technologies, such as Skype, join.me and GoToMeeting, could contribute to a greater range of opportunities opening up for providers of meeting room AV. These platforms will become integrated into the meeting room experience and demand will continue to increase for more collaborative environments where both content and video need to be shared. In the US sample, 66 per cent of respondents had a company sponsored web conferencing account, compared with 44 per cent in the European sample.

The findings come from end user research project carried out by Futuresource across the UK, USA, Germany and France, comprising 500 telephone interviews with AV purchase decision makers and 2,000 surveys of meeting room users. The study provides detailed insights into the decision making process, the now and next of meeting room tech requirements and AV purchasing behaviours.

Data suggests that the IT and energy sectors show the highest rates of web conferencing adoption, with government and healthcare organisations lagging behind the curve.

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Crucially, when a meeting is taking place in their office, over 25 per cent of the sample stated that they would prefer to meet using web conferencing technology, with this preference highest among large and mid-size organisations and professionals working in IT, sales and marketing and C-level management.

“With the lure of web conferencing and 8 per cent of employees we surveyed working from home three or more days a week, the role of the corporate meeting room continues to build momentum,” says McIntyre-Brown. “Our interviews with purchase decision makers revealed that more than half of the meeting room budget is spent on display product; combine that with the increasing number of meeting rooms expected over coming years and the drive toward faster, smaller and more efficient meetings and we’ll see well-informed, agile vendors reap the rewards.”