The global pro AV industry is expected to decline to $239 billion this year – down from a peak of $259 billion in 2019 – according to a new forecast from AVIXA.
The new 2020 AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis report, produced by AVIXA, the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association, indicates that the market will recover its pre-COVID levels in 2022, before growing to $315 billion in 2025. This represents a 5.8 per cent five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and will drive industry revenue $56 billion beyond its 2019 level.
The forecast follows today’s reports that Sennheiser will cut 650 jobs by 2022 as a result of the impact of COVID-19 on the industry.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has broadly impacted the near and longer-term outlooks for economic growth and business activity,” said Sean Wargo, senior director of market intelligence, AVIXA. “Those who have followed AVIXA’s previous forecasts will note the new estimates represent a significant downward revision. Regions and industries are being impacted at different degrees and are on different timetables for recovery. For example, Asia-Pacific will weather 2020 better than others, because it was the first to be impacted by COVID-19 and the first to re-open its economies.”
APAC will have the strongest growth of all regions, with a 7.4 per cent CAGR from 2020 through 2025 — compared to 4.7 per cent for the Americas and 4.5 per cent for EMEA. In 2025, APAC pro AV revenue will amount to $126 billion, compared to $108 billion for the Americas and $81 billion for EMEA.
The corporate market remains the largest application area for pro AV products and services, hitting $52 billion in revenues globally in 2020. Meanwhile, though a far smaller revenue opportunity, at $7.3 billion, the energy and utility business will generate significantly higher growth, with revenue increasing at a CAGR of 10.4 per cent from 2020 through 2025 due to investments in smart grid and sustainable energy sources.
Conferencing and collaboration solutions remain the largest solution area, generating $38 billion globally in 2020. As employees return to work in a limited capacity, AVIXA analysts anticipate further need for collaboration among on-premise and remote workers.
The fastest-growing solution is security/surveillance/life safety, with an 11.4 per cent CAGR. Government and military, education, and corporate are three industries that will generate the most demand for this solution area, due in part to pandemic response. City surveillance is also a significant market for security cameras. Typically, this requires significant storage and server systems to support the camera infrastructure.
Among product segments, streaming media, storage, and distribution (SMSD) is projected to be the single largest component of pro AV revenues, generating $68.5 billion in 2020. SMSD includes all the generic and specialty servers and storage used to manage AV content in the back end. Even more impressive than the size is the growth, which at 9.6 percent, is one of the highest of the categories.
The IOTA report is produced by AVIXA in conjunction with Omdia (formerly IHS Markit), a global research firm with specialty across a number of underlying supply chain markets, many of which overlap with the principal components of the pro AV industry. This specialization provides connections with manufacturers, distributors, integrators, and larger end user firms that provide and consume pro AV products and solutions. This translates into sources of data that are modeled in conjunction with key macroeconomic data to generate the forecasts shown herein.
To learn more about the 2020 AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA), visit avixa.org/IOTA. Regional IOTA reports for the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA will be released in July and August.
