Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA)

Market Intelligence

Explore the Size and Growth of Pro AV

For more information about IOTA or to make a purchase, contact AVIXA.

What is IOTA?

AVIXA’s Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA) is a forecast of end user spending on AV products and services. The study is updated once per year by our partners at Omdia and covers a period of 5-years back and 5-years forward. The revenue data is segmented by geography, vertical markets, solution areas, and product categories. The 2024 IOTA updates prior analysis ondata on the tiers of distribution for the various product categories to see how hardware flows in the market, whether directly to a purchaser or through distributors.

Those purchasing the IOTA bundle will be provided access to the following:

An Initial Guidance report that leverages analyst research, the preliminary market forecast data from AVIXA’s quarterly Market Opportunity Analysis Report (MOAR) and the annual Channel Survey, a collaborative study between Omdia and AVIXA fielded to AV providers.
The Channel Survey report, detailing the key issues and trends from global distributors, VARs, MSPs, and system integrators.
An Industry Overview presentation deck highlighting the latest trends revealed by the current IOTA.
A single user license to an online interactive dashboard where the data can be filtered and visualized.
A supporting notes document written by the analysts who craft the forecast estimates, detailing the trends and assumptions driving the numbers.
A mid-cycle guidance document providing an ‘over-under’ analysis of how the pro AV market is performing relative to forecast. This will be released in the October timeframe.

Check out both our definitions document and the larger FAQ below for more details about the IOTA, its components, usage, and methodology.

How is it used?

Overall, the IOTA is a tool for guiding business strategy about the underlying opportunities within pro AV to inform decisions about market or product expansion. Or more specifically for creating an analysis of total addressable market (TAM) for a given product, solution, or service. This starts with using the overview presentation to get a sense for the general trends and growth. From there users migrate to the dashboard to filter the date to desired segments for comparisons. And lastly, the notes document offers answers to questions about the why behind the forecasts.

Who should purchase?

The use cases described above can span large or small organizations and those across the value chain of pro AV. Manufacturers will find the data useful for sizing relevant categories and benchmarking growth, while also seeing how the products are utilized in solutions and verticals. Distributors will dig into the solution areas to determine product mix and bundling opportunities, while also benchmarking against growth. Integrators can obtain guidance on the opportunity presented by various solution sets and which target markets may yield the best growth. Investment firms also see utility in IOTA as a 3rd party source for market data as part of a due diligence effort.

What does it say?

The 2024 IOTA reveals the state of the industry at a time of staffing challenges and economic headwinds. Here’s just a bit oof what the data says:

Growth is slowing in 2024 as the surge in demand from the pandemic recovery transforms into a new normal somewhere between pre-pandemic levels and the post-pandemic surge. Economic issues have manifested themselves in the form of slower growth in most regions.As pro AV becomes more complex with the advent of cloud, AI and XR, skilled labor becomes more important, however channel players report labor shortages in highly skilled areas as well as an increasing cost of labor.
Supply chain issues have been relieved except for some regions such as the disruption in the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Channel providers are still concerned about regional complexities and the impact of geopolitical issues.
Migration to a software revenue model, incorporating premium AI features, and increased service complexity are both opportunities and challenges for industry players as revealed by the IOTA findings.

Subscribe to the IOTA to learn more about all these trends and more! Fill out an interest form to the right or reach out to our market intelligence staff for more information.

FAQ for IOTA

AVIXA currently collaborates with Omdia (https://omdia.tech.informa.com/) to put together the forecasts. Our approach combines Omdia’s extensive research network with AVIXA’s pro AV expertise and position at the center of the AV community. The methodology starts with inputs from manufacturers across the product categories about their own shipments, expected growth, and allocations to the underlying segments. From there, data and input from integrators, distributors, and end users are added to model out the spending in the segments. This avoids the potential for double counting of hardware sales as they make their way through the distribution tiers. Further assumptions about economic factors and technology usage trends are also added along the way.

The IOTA is a representation of the global size of the market in terms of the amount spent on AV products and services by end user companies. This includes a mark-up on products as provided by the channel. The revenue estimates go back 5 years and forward 5 more.

AVIXA has drawn a large circle around the pro AV industry to include many traditional and adjacent technologies and solutions. Take a look at the following definitions document to see exactly what is included.

In honesty, this does not fit the intended use case for the IOTA data. IOTA is meant as a tool to compare spending across various categories, such as displays vs. speakers. It also helps illuminate product usage trends by modelling revenue into solution areas and markets. Therefore, the data stays at a higher level for TAM and growth questions and does not go down into specifications and subtypes. A need for more granular data can be met by building off IOTA with other sources covered in our answer here.

In short, no. All of the data here is modelled from inputs provided across many sources. It is also allocated into segments based upon assumptions. This means the IOTA is a good compass for industry direction, but not an absolute ruler for the exact size of a segment. Use case then follows, positioning IOTA as an important tool for gauging relative opportunities as part of a strategic effort, often coupled with other sources for better triangulation.

While the revenues are derived from units and pricing from manufacturers, we only report on revenues. Since the data is rolled up into solutions categories and includes a service component, units are less meaningful.

The IOTA is meant to represent AV related products and services purchased by end users. This includes but is not limited to just those purchased from an integrator. Direct purchases from a vendor/ manufacturer, those from a distributor, or a purchase from a pro-sumer channel are also included. The idea is if it competes with the integrator/installer channel, then it is included as an adjacent opportunity. However, the data does not represent the total sales of all related products since their use case can fall significantly outside of pro AV, such as those for normal consumer use.

Essentially, yes. Current prices are collected as part of Omdia’s foundational data gathering, and future prices are modeled based on that input combined with forecasts from IHS Markit and other noted economists. Thus one could say that inflation is included. However, bear in mind that technology tends to be deflationary in nature, given the continual improvement in underlying specifications and features through time. This makes apples-to-apples comparisons difficult, unlike within commodities like food or energy.

IOTA is refreshed once per year with a release targeted for around the time of InfoComm in the U.S. This allows us to get solid year-end sales estimates from manufacturers for the prior year to use in the forecast model and invest the time needed to check assumptions and keep up-to-date with our constantly evolving industry.

Consuming the IOTA data starts with a read of the Industry Overview report, which is a Powerpoint summary of the key trends emerging from the current study. From there, users can navigate to the interactive dashboard embedded right on the AVIXA.org site to further dig into the data, with the ability to export views to Excel as needed. This replaces the need for an Excel file, which is prone to user issue and corruption. We grant access to the IOTA page to a single user contact, though additional badges are available for purchase. Lastly, the IOTA bundle comes with an analyst notes document containing details about the drivers and assumptions behind the forecast.

Any given integration firm, even the multi-nationals, would likely be dwarfed by the total market sizing estimates for the entirety of pro AV given its breadth. The same is often even true of many manufacturers. But instead of really providing an estimate for the total opportunity a specific integrator could go after, the IOTA reveals opportunities through the COMPOSITION of the spending and the relative growth. Thus an integrator could see that their lifeblood market of corporate is growing at a certain rate within their country or region as a benchmark. At the same time IOTA would show that hospitality is growing at a faster rate, as an example, and so may be worthy of consideration. The same goes for solution areas like conferencing/collaboration, live events, digital signage, or learning. As mentioned elsewhere, this makes IOTA a useful tool for strategic planning rather than absolute measurement.

Believe it or not, the goal of IOTA is not to replace your other sources for market data relating to pro AV. Instead, it is meant to augment that source. The best analogy here is a navigational term, triangulation. All research methodologies aiming to size a given market have their own caveats and weaknesses, resulting in a bias. And not one of them are absolute measures because none get data from every seller in every geography across all product or solution areas. And even when they are close to 100% participation, they still may not offer a comparative to related opportunity areas. This makes it super important for companies to look at multiple sources to get a better sense for the market landscape to reveal opportunities for a business. Still happy with your single source?! Let’s talk again when you enter a major strategic planning phase or when you’re looking for growth outside your normal areas.

Anyone who has tried to do an industry sizing project on their own knows that the number of inputs and expertise needed is extensive, thereby translating into a high cost to execute the project. AVIXA has taken on that cost for the industry and then offers it for a fee to those who really need access to it for their company’s research efforts, which isn’t everyone. To stress, that means AVIXA is dividing the cost among our network, making IOTA much cheaper than if you wanted to go purchase a similar project from another source. Note that we charge individually for the IOTA rather than putting it in membership to avoid raising membership costs by including something that many would not need or use. That said, you will also see portions of IOTA shared out in various content vehicles for general consumption and members only. Check out our State of the Industry report as an example.

Part of a shared cost approach means that every user will find a different portion of the data useful for their efforts. This is built into the pricing. Otherwise, to get a very specific answer with a specific tailored deliverable would actually cost MORE. Buyers of customized research are likely familiar with this nuance of the market intelligence market -- the more specific your data need, the more precise the methodology and therefore the higher costs. We simplify that by providing overall access and facilitating filtering and segmentation. And access to the broader data set creates the opportunity for a ‘fortuitous discovery’ of an unexpected potential market.

Each year we publish a document of analyst notes that is included with the IOTA bundle. This provides the why behind the numbers, from the perspective of the Omdia analysts who put together the forecast. You will find most answers here. However, AVIXA MI staff are also available to answer your questions to help ensure you get good usage of the data, within reason of course. We limit these engagements to about a half hour in total in order to have enough time for all our other MI tasks, such as getting out the latest versions of our many reports.

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Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA)

Market Intelligence

Explore the Size and Growth of Pro AV

FAQ for IOTA

Interested in purchasing this study at the member price?

Is Your Company a Global Leader?

Market Intelligence