Due to the pandemic, pro AV industry revenue dropped to $214 billion globally in 2020, one year after peaking at $259 billion, according to the new 2021 AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA) produced by AVIXA, the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association.
The 2021 IOTA investigates global trends in the pro AV industry to report on AVIXA’s current five-year projections of revenues for products and services and the significant trends driving these forecasts.
Despite the down year, the IOTA predicts revenue will hit $232 billion in 2021 and reach $329 billion in 2026, which would represent a 7.2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
Pro AV revenues were not as impacted in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region as overall annual growth for AV spending in the APAC region registered at -16.1%, a revenue of $78.8 billion and contributed to 37% of global spending. This is largely attributed to China taking many precautionary measures to COVID-19, which led to a quicker recovery.
Read: AVIXA Pro-AV Business Index Shows Impressive Growth in Sales, Stability in Employment
The pro AV market dropped in the Americas by 16.7%, to $77.6 billion in 2020, despite a decent first quarter, but revenues are expected to rise in 2021 to $83.6 billion.
The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region took the biggest hit as pro AV spending dropped 19.7% to $57 billion in 2020. This region was hit much harder economically by the pandemic which played a role in the revenue drop.
“Back in the early part of 2020, there was a lot of optimism that initial lockdowns and other measures would help get most regions through the worst of the pandemic, thereby allowing economies to rebound and pro AV to benefit. While true in parts of Asia, this was not the case in much of the world and so pro AV fared even worse than our initial forecasts would indicate,” says Sean Wargo, Senior Director of Market Intelligence, AVIXA, in the press release.
“The good news is we are now seeing meaningful recovery, and so strong growth dominates our revised estimates going forward,” Wargo says.
Market Predictions
Conferencing and collaboration produced the highest revenue as workers and students went remote and events became virtual and is expected to generate $43.5 billion in 2021 and hit $49.9 billion by 2026.
Conversely, live events and performance and entertainment solutions were most impacted with a combined annual revenue drop of 49.7% and are expected to have the slowest recovery to pre-pandemic levels, due to lingering restrictions and public reluctance to large crowds.
But both solutions will have a significant bounce back with record-breaking revenue by 2026. Live events will generate $33.9 billion, and performance and entertainment will produce $30.6 billion.
Digital signage will also perform well with a $32 billion forecast for 2021 and $44.7 billion in 2026, and content management hardware will generate $62.3 billion in 2021 with a CAGR of 10.4%.
So, despite a down year as result of COVID-19, the pro AV industry is set to have a very overall prosperous recovery in both 2021 and over the next five years.
